


The Lives of Clockwork Men

by The_Librarian



Series: Life After Equivalence [5]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alchemy, Attempted Murder, Brotherly Love, Chases, Excessive pink, Flame Alchemy, Gen, House Hunting, Independent alchemists, Murder, Mysterious Strangers, Rapid fire syntax, moving home
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-08-29 23:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 80,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Librarian/pseuds/The_Librarian
Summary: After a year of relative normality, Ed, Winry, Al and Noah are returning to Central to sort out their future. In theory, that should just mean house-hunting, making new friends and working out just what the heck a non-State Alchemist does with their time. But murder most alchemic sets off a desperate hunt for a killer in the city streets and the perfect team find themselves facing a new and remorseless enemy. Their future together might just be over before it even begins.The next step in a Life After Equivalence. Violent depictions and Ed's foul language abound.





	1. Winding Up

**Author's Note:**

> My dear old things! Welcome back! A little later than planned due to real life but here we are again in this rambling extension of a 13 year old anime and this time I bring you the obligatory murder mystery instalment. Funnily enough, I find it a bit strange the recurring theme in fan-fics to have serial killers on the loose in the FMA universe but I suppose it was inevitable that I'd succumb to the same kind of plot. Hopefully there will be enough twists to eek out some enjoyment and if not, at least stick around for various characters in differing states of undress.
> 
> As ever, I am indebted and in awe of all the people who created and own the version of FMA this series spins out of and to my supporting proof-reader. And of course to you, dear reader, wherever you may be. The world may end tomorrow - but if it does not, this fic will update on Tuesdays.
> 
> And now, read on!

“This is Central, all change please – Central, all change!”

The conductor's announcement was still ringing through the carriages as Al jumped eagerly down on to the platform. He breathed in deeply, savouring the scent of oil and smoke. It _was_ good to be back.

His enthusiasm dipped slightly when he remembered that there wouldn't be anyone waiting for them on the platform. Ed was in Rush Valley with Winry and wouldn't be in for another couple of days, and he did not expect anyone from the General's office to have the time to meet the train.

Funny. The only other time he could remember arriving without someone being there to meet him was when he had come with Wrath to try and open the Gate.

“Al? Could you . . . ?”

He turned quickly at Noah's voice and helped her manoeuvre her suitcase through the narrow door. She smiled her thanks and stepped lightly down to join him. Around them, passengers streamed towards the exit in a babbling tide, people from every corner of the country mingling together. Amongst such a crowd, they were just two more faces, nothing special or remarkable about them.

Quite the change from arriving as a hollow suit of armour with a famous State Alchemist at his side.

“We go . . . over there, don't we?” Noah pointed over the heads of the people in front of them, towards the gate on to the street.

Al nodded and picked up the suitcases. She gave him a look, clearly indicating that she did not need him to carry her things for her, but he just smiled and shrugged. He liked helping, after all. With a slight sigh, she relented and let him lead the way.

Since unlike most of their fellow travellers they were not in a blasting hurry to get anywhere, they ended up at the back of the rush and by the time they got out on to the concourse, they had a reasonably free path to the street. The downside was that the last taxi on the rank outside was long gone.

“I guess we're going to have to wait for the next one,” he said resignedly.

“We'd better join the queue then.”

He followed Noah's gaze to the line of annoyed looking people stretching along the pavement. For some reason, it made him want to laugh. Just the idea of waiting patiently in line with everyone else, without Ed there to bustle them to the front or dash off in a rush to find a quicker way of getting where they wanted to go. It was . . . oddly novel.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “Let's do that. It's not like we're in a hurry.”

 

* * *

 

He watched the man and the woman take their place with the other taxi-seeking hopefuls. They were quite a pair, both tall and striking, the one fair and easy, the other dark and shy. He had caught a little of their scent as they passed, a touch of ozone on their skin in among the stinks of sweat and travel. The scent, he supposed, of alchemy.

They had not seen him, had not even glanced his way. Still, he pulled his cap down a little firmer over his hair just in case. Leaning against one of the great columns that supported the roof, he affected the air of a person on the look-out for someone in particular, the moving gaze, the occasional start and expression of disappointment. It would fool the station staff for a while but not forever. Sooner or later he would have to move on and find another spot.

That was fine. He got restless easily. In the meantime, his eye kept being drawn to the couple at the taxi rank. He knew who they were of course. Knew what they were capable of. Would they know him, he wondered, if they did happen to see him?

“There has been a change of plans,” a voice said softly in his ear.

He did not turn. He did not need to, to know who was there. His hands twitched reflexively.

“We are leaving.”

Giving a small jerk of the chin to indicate his understanding, he straightened away from the column and yawned deliberately. He could see the line for the taxis diminishing as several cars appeared at once. The pair of alchemists would not be lucky this time though, not unless they decided to share.

“Don't worry. Our goal has only been deferred to another day. It shall still come to pass.”

Putting his hands in his pockets, he rolled his shoulders. What did that matter to him, he thought, stealing one last look at Alphonse Elric and Noah Roma before he walked casually to the exit at the other end of the concourse.

He had all the time in the world.


	2. Mainspring

Edward Elric was not used to being the least smart person in the room.

That, to be clear, was not arrogance. There was a hell of a lot he did not know and plenty of conversations that flew over his head. But he always prided himself on an ability to pick things up as he went along. Ideas, concepts, whatever – picking up things as he went was pretty much how he lived his life and faced with most subjects, he could get to grips with them quickly enough.

Two days in Rush Valley really put that talent to the test. Auto-mail engineers, aside from being generally insane, spent most of their time speaking another language. He could just about follow the material science and metallurgy aspect of it, though they had a tendency to use totally different terminology (to confuse him specifically, he suspected), and the physiological side of it was not totally opaque, but the moment they started talking about motors or drive linkages . . .

It was a little bit like being back with Alfons' rocket group, only without the reassurance that if the worst came to the worst, he could still contribute on things like the fuel mix and the rate of thrust. Even the mathematics of auto-mail left him baffled, mainly because it involved the kind of obscure constants that meant he could not get through more than a couple of lines at a time without reaching for a reference book. And of course when the engineers talked about that stuff aloud, they assumed everyone knew exactly what all those constants meant and intimately understood the shit-load of weird shorthand they insisted on using all the freaking time.

After a while, it got very frustrating. Hell, even _Paninya_ could keep up better than he could. Well she was basically Dominic's kid so of course she could. But it was not the kind of science Ed was either adept at or interested in so he floundered. After all the effort and time Winry spent on his auto-mail, never mind anyone else's, he wanted to at least try to understand the basics of it – and that was the problem, really. Winry and her friends in Rush Valley were so far past the basics that going from an introductory text to them was like going from moving a small mound of mud to trying to copy Mustang's flame alchemy on the fly.

He did have the very small comfort that Winry was clearly the brightest of the bunch. The level of awe among the other apprentices she hung out with was pretty obvious to the outside eye, though she didn't seem to notice it. Doddie – and Ed just about managed not to grind his teeth at the thought of the scrawny red-headed moaner who was for some reason one of Winry's friends – had outright said that it would be years before most of the rest of them would be able to match the kind of work Winry was capable of. He'd been a bit drunk at the time but most of those round the table had agreed. One of the bigger guys – Jackson? Jason? – had looked down at his meat-platter hands and ruefully said that he didn't expect to ever be able to produce something so finely made as Ed's arm and hand.

That had set them all staring at him – at his _auto-mail_ – and thinking about it reminded him of the other reason he didn't really get on with Rush Valley. The world-wide centre for auto-mail was home to a lot of people hauling around a lot of metal and most of them seemed to think they were in a competition. Who had the best, the biggest, the most bad-ass – as someone who had never really asked for more than a working arm and leg, it got on Ed's nerves. It seemed to piss Winry off a bit too, especially around some of the mechanics who had auto-mail themselves, those that insisted on making a lot of noise about the cool stuff they would do to it, anyway. It _definitely_ pissed Dominic off, that's for sure. Ed had seen that first hand when one of his customers showed up asking if they could get a modification like some gang-fighter they'd seen. Dominic had not said anything and kept on not saying anything very loudly until the guy gave up and left.

Either way, while it was nice to be somewhere where he could walk around with his arm on show and not get a lot of stupid questions or insults, it was not so great to have everyone ogling his metal-work like it was . . . a cool tattoo or something. There wasn't any shortage of those either. He'd seen people around the Valley showing more ink than skin. Some of it did look pretty damn awesome. Some of it though . . . it was definitely possible to be freaked out by how far people would go with a needle and coloured ink and he thought this as someone who'd stared into the gates of hell. That was the thing about Rush Valley though. Most everyone there _weren't_ freaked out. Not by anything.

The night out with Winry's friends was enough to confirm that really did mean anything too. Ed's eyes have been opened to quite how _broad minded_ his friend has gotten over the years they'd been apart and boy was that broad.

 _My girlfriend_ , he corrected mentally, rolling over and patting the patch of warmth she had left behind on the bed beside him. _Winry is my girlfriend. Who has gotten up earlier than me to go have coffee with her machine-freak pals before she gets on with packing up the rest of her tools._

The thought of having to haul those self-same tools all the way to Central made him want to bury himself in the sheets again. He could just picture one of the cases breaking open and them having to hunt escaped screwdrivers through a train carriage or worse, across an open platform. But it wasn't as if they had a choice. Winry needed her tools.

 _Winry's my girlfriend._ He rolled the thought around his head a few times as he yawned and hauled himself upright. Even after half a year – longer – the idea was weird. After all it was _Winry_. His mechanic, his friend, his _best_ friend even when he hadn't really realised it. She wasn't supposed to be his – partner? Lover? She was supposed to shout at him when he did something stupid or whack him when he broke his auto-mail. Not –

Only she was. She really was. And she didn't seem to regret it or doubt it or second-guess herself. Even after half a year in which they'd spent months apart. It made him feel very happy and that, in itself, was a strange feeling.

“Hey, Ed!” Paninya flung the door to Winry's bedroom open and stuck her head inside. Ed yelped and scrambled to cover himself up with the sheets. She grinned, utterly unashamed. “Wanna spar?”

He threw a pillow at her. “Let me get dressed first, you crazy thief person!” How was she upright and bright this early in the morning when she'd drunk more than the rest of them last night?

She stuck her tongue out at him and then waved airily. “See you down in the yard when you've found your underpants then!”

Ed groaned as the door banged shut after her. He wondered how much Winry would kill him if he somehow, totally by accident, contrived to leave Paninya at the top of a really tall building without her left leg. Probably a lot. Shame.

Now where _had_ he left his pants . . . ?

 

* * *

 

It was the most extraordinary motor car Noah had ever seen. She would have been the first to admit that she did not have the widest range of experience about such things, especially in Amestris, but even so, she was fairly sure there could not be another like it. There just could not.

For a start, it was painted bright pink. What wasn't pink was bright polished chrome (chromium, applied to steel via electroplating, from either chromium sulfate or chromium chloride. The description sprang unbidden to her mind. Had she read that or was it a memory from the Elrics? She was fairly sure it was something she had read). An angel graced the top of the radiator and the exhaust pipes were like another set of wings, sweeping along the length of the car. Taken as a whole, it was like looking at the offspring of a church organ and a wedding cake, only much sleeker than that description would naturally imply.

And this was the vehicle that the League of Independent Alchemists had sent to collect Alphonse? Noah was not sure whether to be impressed or horrified.

The driver was a wheezing man in his late fifties with an enormous nose and a cap that looked several sizes too large. On the doorstep, he doffed the hat with much ceremony. “Good morning, ma'ham. Lady 'andley-Page's compliments h'and hym 'ere to pick up Mister h'Elric h'and party.” The wrong emphasis with his 'h's put Noah in mind of ridiculous cartoons of British aristocrats that she had – that someone she had taken memories from had read.

“Ah, he's just coming,” she told him, glancing over her shoulder into Mrs Hughes' front hall and hoping that was true. She had left Al in the kitchen helping Mrs Hughes persuade Elisia that the trip to the LIA would be very boring and therefore not a good reason to miss a day of school. The sight of the car was not helping this effort.

“Maybe I should just go and see . . .” she began after a few moments.

“Hello!” Al called, hopping into the hall with one shoe only half on, “Sorry for keeping you waiting!” He hurried along to offer his hand to the driver. “How do you do?”

Doffing his hat again, the man bowed stiffly, looking a little mortified. “Very h'well, thank h'yu sir.”

“Oh. Good.” A little taken aback, Al let his arm drop back to his side. “Thank you for coming to pick us up. It's very kind of you.”

“Not at h'all, sir. If hyu'll step this way?”

Al blinked at the man as he walked back to the car, then looked questioningly at Noah. She shook her head, not able to give him any sensible suggestions. He shrugged. “OK, looks like we're off,” he called back into the house, “See you later! Have a good day at school, Elisia!”

The driver held the door open for them to get into the back of the car. The inside was upholstered in white leather and smelled slightly of roses. The seats were incredibly comfortable, far more so than they had any right to be. It felt strange to be sitting in something so luxurious, wrong even. _Not meant for people like her_. The thought was a poisonous snake rearing up in Noah's mind and she wished it was something that she could pin down as another stolen memory, someone else's pain borrowed by accident. But no. It was her voice, speaking from a lifetime of being the outsider, the suffered presence even among outcasts.

Cool fingers squeezed her hand. She looked down in surprise, then up again. Al, obviously. He smiled warmly at her. How did he do that? She knew he could not read her mind any more than she could his, now, and yet sometimes . . .

“Hy was told to drive h'yu directly to the mansion house,” the driver said as he took his place behind the wheel, “I 'ope that is hacceptable?”

“Oh, absolutely! Thank you, that sounds great!”

Noah's first thought was that Al was being exuberantly grateful and polite because he did not know how to respond to someone acting so . . . servile. But when she studied his face more closely, she realised that it was more than that. Al was _nervous_.

That was a surprise. Noah did not feel especially anxious herself. She did not know what to expect from the invitation to the League's headquarters in Central and was honestly curious to find out what a group of alchemists looked like, having only encountered them in ones or twos so far. But Al was clearly not so relaxed and the longer they were in the car, the more he fidgeted and tugged at his collar as if never quite happy that it was straight. For the life of her, Noah could not work out why.

Then she started to think it through from his point of view. Here he was, the brother of the famous Fullmetal Alchemist, being invited to visit people who were completely opposed to the idea that control of high-level alchemy should rest in the hands of the State. Invited, perhaps, precisely because his brother was once more a member of the Military, perhaps because the LIA wanted to make some sort of political point. And he would be on his own, without Ed to bluster through whatever happened in his own inimitable style, without back-up in the face of a group of respected alchemists who likely had far more experience than he did at applying their science.

So, not so much of a surprise after all.

Noah squeezed Al's hand back. “You'll be fine,” she whispered.

The nerves did not quite vanish from his face but they did ease a bit. “Of course I will,” he said, just as quietly, “I've got you to look after me, haven't I?”

 

* * *

 

From the sounds of metal-on-metal and the shouts and grunts coming through the back door of Dominic's shop, Ed and Paninya had found a way to amuse themselves while she was out. Winry pulled a face and tried not to think about how small the back yard was and how big the area that Elric-patented sparring could cover. She really hoped they wouldn't end up chasing each other over the rooftops again –

Again. As if they had done it more than that one time with that game she and Paninya had played with Ed's watch. That had been – wow. Was it really that long ago? Yeah, it must have been. Wow.

Dominic wandered through from the back, nodding a good morning to her before settling down at the lathe. She watched him, trying to fix the image in her head. It would probably be one of the last chances she had to see him at work. She was going to miss that.

“Don't you have things to be doing?” he asked gruffly, making her start guiltily.

“I just need to pick up my tools from in here.” Starting with the jewellers screwdrivers on the workbench, she decided, scooping them up into their carry-pouch. It was a good job that Dominic had insisted she label every single one of her tools back when she first became his apprentice. The habit had become engrained and so now she just need to pick up everything with green string wrapped around the handle. That made it a lot easier.

A particularly loud crash from outside suggested someone encountering a wall at speed and not entirely under their own control. Oh, if they did any serious damage to their auto-mail now, she was going to give them what-for, never mind best friendship and other stuff. 'Other stuff' being the designated label for all Ed-related activities not covered under 'best friendship' and being a source of great amusement to Paninya who had tried without success to worm details out of Winry –

Oh no. Where was her size five Allen key? She was _sure_ she had left it by the upright drill but now she came to look it wasn't anywhere in sight. What the hell had she done with –

Dominic silently reached across and plucked the offending tool from beneath the drill stand.

“Oh. Thanks!” She took it, feeling slightly embarrassed. Then she leant down and gave him a quick hug.

The old mechanic stiffened in surprise.

“I'm going to miss you,” she explained matter-of-factly.

Slightly awkward due to the angle, he gave her a pat on the back, which was pretty much the most affection he ever displayed. “You'll do great,” he told her.

Smiling, she let go and straightened up, brushing hair from her eyes. She could actually believe it when her teacher said it.

“Hey!” Ed's shout echoed through the house. “Get back here!”

Paninya's laugh was nearly as loud although with an odd receding quality as if she was, as a non-specific example, disappearing up a wall.

Good grief.

Trying hard not to think about the imminent collateral damage, Winry rounded up her lump hammers and a couple of torque wrenches. That was pretty much the last of her stuff. It left the shop looking emptier. OK, _tidier_. She was taking herself out of the shop, piece by piece, until it would be as if she had never been there –

Well, that was a morbid thought. And there were plenty of photographs to prove otherwise, many of which decorated the kitchen and Paninya's room, so the evidence would remain. So would her memories and all the skills she had learnt from Dominic. The workshop would always be part of her. That was a much better thought.

A loud thump came down through the building, a noise that might just have been a heavy, partly steel body landing hard on the roof. Winry wondered which one of them was getting the upper hand and smiled to herself. She would miss Rush Valley and Paninya and everyone, but maybe it would be nice to be around saner people for a while. Like Sheska and Gracia and –

Ed. OK, never mind. Sane was probably not really an option when you were doing other stuff with Edward Elric.

She wrapped up the bundle of tools and stowed it away in the box waiting on the counter. It was a really good job that she would have Ed there to help transport all her equipment. Before now, she hadn't quite appreciated how much stuff she had accumulated in the past three, four years. They were definitely going to have to invest in some decent cupboards in their new place.

It struck her that on the other hand, she didn't really have any idea how much stuff _Ed_ would be bringing. How much stuff did he actually _own_? Some clothes, sure, and his auto-mail. The State pocket watch and a couple of suitcases. The few books she always saw in his barracks room, maybe. Those could just have been ones he'd stolen from a library or the General or something. Hair ties. Beyond that – her mind was blank. Huh. There really wasn't anything else. As far as she knew, he didn't even carry photographs.

That was sort of sad. Was there anything she could do about it? Was there anything she _should_ do about it? He didn't seem overly bothered by a lack of material possessions. She would just have to fill their place with enough junk for the two of them . . .

The click-clink of the door behind her broke into her reflections. She turned automatically to greet the customer, remembering only at the last moment that that wasn't her job any more. What the hell, she wasn't gone yet.

“Hi there!”

The slender young man in the doorway raised a hand in a little wave. “Hi.”

She was sure she recognised him from somewhere, she was sure of it. The red waist-coat, the black coat slung over his arm, the blue lines tattooed on his palm –

It clicked. The alchemist who'd sheltered from the rains last spring, the one who'd been trying to buy a pair of gauntlets from someone. “Oh, hey there! Uh . . . Michael, right?”

“That's right. It's good to see you again. Hello sir.” He bowed formally to Dominic.

Dominic grunted but did not get up.

Winry looked Michael up and down. He looked much the same as he had a year ago, albeit much drier. Same curly brown hair, same meek smile. She thought he might be a little more tanned than before but other than that, not any different. “You're looking well,” she concluded, “Still travelling?”

“Yes, yes.” He patted his coat. “You look well too! Though, ah . . .” His eyes tracked to the tool box on the counter. “Sorry, am I interrupting? You're not about to head out somewhere?”

“Not until this afternoon – it's fine! So . . . if you're here, does that mean . . . ?”

“Absolutely – ah, may I?” Indicating the counter, he made as if to put his coat on it, completing the action at Winry's agreement. Fumbling a little with the pockets, he dug something out, carefully shielding whatever it was from her with his back. With an auto-mail mechanic's instincts, she mentally measured him, easy enough given his clothes were cut well enough to flatter his figure. Shoulders, back, waist – he was not that far off Al's build, less muscular, a little taller, otherwise pretty similar.

Michael turned around and all other considerations went clean out of Winry's head.

The gauntlets were _beautiful._ They were self-evidently the work of a master craftsman, so carefully made that they sat like a second skin against Michael's hands. The motion when he flexed his fingers was easy and fluid, the segments barely making a noise as they slid around one another. Even though they were, logically, 'just' gloves, they were as good as any number of auto-mail hands she'd seen.

It was entirely possible she was in love with the metalwork in front of her.

Grinning shyly at the enthusiasm on her face, Michael flipped his right hand palm-up. A flash of purple light crackled between the joints and when he turned it over again, there was a transmutation array picked out on the back of the gauntlet. Another flash and the array reformed into a couple of different variations.

“So it all works like you hoped?” Winry asked excitedly, remembering one _particular_ thing Michael had dropped into their last conversation, “Everything you wanted to do with it?”

“Yes actually. Better than I'd hoped. And, well, I did promise you a demonstration – I'm terribly sorry that it took so long – and now you're about to leave –”

“No, honestly, it's absolutely fine! Really – actually, your timing couldn't be better . . . I know someone who'll want to see it too – wait there a second!”

She dashed around the counter and through to the yard. There were plenty of scuffs and up-turned crates to indicate where the sparring had been but no actual sign of either Ed or Paninya. Sighing, she threw back her head and yelled into the sky. “Hey! Paninya! Stop kicking Ed's ass and let him come down here, will ya? There's someone I need to introduce him to!”

 

* * *

 

The League's mansion house was pretty big. Al had seen bigger buildings but this was definitely in the top twenty. Maybe the top fifteen. Beyond that . . . it was a building in Central. Ostentatious, lots of windows, some expressive statues, all the usual trappings. The gated grounds with their trees and rose beds were nice but again, not particularly unusual for that part of the city. As the big pink car drew up by the fountain that dominated the front drive, the main thing that struck Al about the place was how much it _didn't_ look like a centre of learning.

The small copperplate sign by the door did not really off-set the background impression that this was just another very expensive place to live.

Once the car had stopped, the driver bounded out and, with an unexpected turn of speed, came around to open the passenger door. Presumably to stop something horrible happening such as Al or Noah actually opening the door on their own. Getting out, Al thanked him profusely. The driver just bowed again.

Al stuck a finger inside his collar and tried to ease it a little. Maybe he should have gone with something a little less formal after all. Though given the car, the driver and the massive front of the house, formal was definitely the right theme for the day. Oh, there were times he wished he had Ed's ability to wade through social niceties like they weren't there.

It really was a good job Noah was there with him to stop him going to pieces with nervousness. He hoped this wasn't going to be equally nerve-wracking for her or worse, boring. Her expression was openly curious though, so hopefully it would all be OK. Mostly he was just glad to have company.

The driver led the way to the front doors and pushed them open. Inside was a grand hall dominated by two intertwined staircases coiling up to the first floor. In the middle, surrounded by a lot of plants in elaborate pots, was a reception desk manned by a very morose looking person with a big black moustache. He stood up and opened his mouth as the three of them came in but the driver waved him back to his seat. “Don't worry George. 'Er Ladyship said hy was to take 'em straight up.” The receptionist shut his mouth with an audible clack and gestured at the left-hand staircase. “This h'way then,” said the driver.

At the top of the stairs was a wide gallery lined with suits of armour, old banners and some attractively arranged bunches of flowers in yet more ornate pots. A line of wood-panelled doors offered ways deeper into the house and it was through one of these that they went, emerging into –

Into a scene of controlled chaos. Al figured the room had originally been intended as a ballroom or reception room or else the art kind of gallery. There were still pictures on the wall, various classical scenes and a couple of intimidating portraits. Beyond that, however, the place was a confusion of tables, cabinets, crates and the sort of complex scientific equipment that should under no circumstances be casually carried around by a couple of workmen who were clearly not paying complete attention to where they were going. Gold and purple light flared occasionally as one of the many, many people milling around performed a transmutation, fixing something that had been carelessly dented or broken and in one extreme case, disassembling a table and reassembling it on the other side of a door it would never have fit through otherwise. The air was full of dust and electricity and a lot of shouting.

Al was astonished that the most he had been able to hear of this in the entrance hall was faint banging. Clearly this was a very well-built house.

“Ah, there you are!” A woman in a pink trouser suit the exact same shade as the car emerged from the fray, builders and alchemists scattering from her path. As far as Al was a judge, he guessed she was in her early thirties. Her blonde hair was coiffured within an inch of its life, her nails were perfectly manicured and there was not the slightest indication that she was even remotely inconvenienced by the work going on around her. She beamed at them all. “Welcome, welcome, so very good of you to join us! Thank you Parker, that will be all.” The way she spoke to the driver betrayed a deeper affection than the curt dismissal would otherwise have suggested.

“M'lady.” He bowed to her and to Al and Noah, then smartly disappeared back the way they had come.

Lady Handley-Paige shook their hands warmly, Noah first, then Al. “Really, I am so very grateful you decided to accept our invitation, Miss Roma, Mr Elric. I do hope you won't mind that you have caught us in the middle of a little renovation.” A full-length laboratory worktop went past behind her, the gas taps still attached and dangerously close to braining the workman on one end. “We're outfitting the east wing for our more experimentally focussed members and – no, no, the crucible needs to go on the ground floor! Thank you! – and it is not a particularly quiet exercise as you can see!”

“That's OK. It, uh, it all looks very interesting . . .” Al hazarded, “Thank you for inviting us, Lady Handley-”

“Oh, you must call me Penny,” the lady insisted, neatly side-stepping a slightly out of control set of shelves, “Shall we get started on the tour?” Without really waiting for an answer, she spun around and marched back into the fray.

Sincerely grateful that his alchemy training had thoroughly covered dodging low-flying objects, Al gave Noah a slightly shaky grin and set off after their host.

 

* * *

 

“Oh, I definitely had you! You were definitely going down!”

“Keep dreaming,” Ed retorted, scrubbing at the muck that had gotten caught in his hair during one particularly crazy tumble down a roof.

Paninya stuck her tongue out at him, then thumped him on the back. “You fight well for a shorty alchemist, you know that?”

Be the bigger man, be the bigger man – wait, he _was_ the bigger man by at least a couple of inches! “You're not so bad yourself.” That really wasn't as hard to say as he expected. It was even kind of true, for a given value of untrained street brawling. He wondered who she used as a punching bag when he wasn't around.

“So who's this you want me to meet?” he asked loudly as they came into the shop. Through the front door since the sparring session had taken them a couple of buildings down the street. Which meant he very nearly walked into the over-dressed man hovering by the counter. And that presumably answered the question.

Winry shot him a glare then cleared her throat. “This is Michael. Michael . . . Dorian.” She hesitated just a fraction over his surname, as if she needed to think to remember it. “He's an alchemist I met last year.”

Ed's mind skipped to the metal rose upstairs on Winry's desk. So this was who'd given it to her, was it? The guy quailed a little under his stare.

“Michael, this is my boyfriend Ed,” Winry continued blithely but in that way where the subtext was 'behave or else', “He's an alchemist too and I bet he'll be really interested in what you can do.”

“Ah, nice to meet you.” Michael Dorian stuck out a hand. For some reason he was wearing metal gloves.

Ed shook, careful he didn't accidentally squeeze too hard with his auto-mail and careful too not to be annoyed by the way Michael's eyes went wide at the sight of the metal arm. He held the grip for a couple of seconds longer than necessary to show how not-annoyed he was. “Hi.”

There really wasn't enough room for four people to stand between the counter and the door. Paninya sorted that out by pushing rudely past him and going into the back. That just left the three of them and Dominic who was working and apparently oblivious to anything beyond his lathe. Winry was glaring at Ed again, clearly thinking he should be saying more, though really, what was he supposed to do when she just out of the blue presented him with an alchemist in a stupid waist-coat? Though, _boyfriend_. That was pretty nice to hear aloud.

She was still glaring.

“So,” he began, rubbing the back of his neck, “What is it I'll be interested in?”

“Well, I'm sure it . . . well, I'm sure someone of your calibre wouldn't necessarily be . . . that is . . . I'm sorry, I don't know if I'm getting the wrong idea but . . . you _are_ Edward Elric, aren't you?”

Oh. Freakin' brilliant. “Yes.”

He thought the other alchemist was about to faint or swoon or something stupid like that. “I thought so . . . that is . . . it's a very great honour to meet you, sir.”

Ed felt his eyes bulge. _Sir? Really?_

“Now I'm sure I'm intruding – are you sure that you would have time to – if you didn't –”

“It's fine.” Winry sailed in with absolute certainty. “Do you need anything to do it?”

“No, not at all. I've worked out a lot of the finer details since last year –”

“What are we talking about here?” Ed demanded, frustration building, “What – what is it that you can do?”

Michael began to answer then changed his mind and put his hands together. A transmutation etched arrays on the back of his gauntlets. Wordlessly, he held them out for Ed to inspect.

OK, if that was what he wanted – air manipulation, that was obvious. Compression and directional elements, a nexus for creating heat and amplifying motion that would probably lead to a near-explosive – only it wasn't quite right for just plain blasting, this would be a more wide-scale effect and –

Wait.

“You've gotta be _kidding_ me!”

 

* * *

 

The tour took them at dizzying speed through a maze of rooms right across the sprawling mansion. With seemingly limitless exuberance, Lady Handley-Paige – Penny – showed off the full range of facilities the LIA offered its members, from offices to laboratories to fully catered living quarters. The League existed, she told them, to promote alchemy for all. They offered support to all kinds of researchers in all sorts of fields regardless of background or the kind of applications their work could be turned towards. There were stipulations – they would not give aid to weapons research and the taboos on human and chimeric alchemy remained well in force – but those actually worked in favour of all the alchemists quietly pouring their efforts into medicine or botany or anything else that had been considered beneath the requirements of the State Alchemy Programme.

“There has been no coordinated effort to promote non-military research in decades! Our best and brightest have been forced to seek support from the State Military to further their research, even at the expense of the material gain that research could have brought to the nation if directed down the right paths! Hundreds of talented people condemned to a constant struggle to bring their theories to fruition! As soon as we had the chance to address that travesty, it was our duty to do so!”

The mansion was the Handley-Paige family home, which Penny had inherited from her father. Almost as soon as the ink was dry on the papers signing power back over to the Assembly, she had started drawing up plans to transform it into a research centre. “All these rooms, all this space! Far too much for any one person, all going to waste! Better to put them to a practical purpose!” In no time at all, going by how she told it, a small group of like-minded non-military alchemists had banded together around the idea and from there it had just sort of grown. “None of us would ever have made the grade for the State Alchemy Exam, you know, not with our interests. Really, could you imagine me on the battlefield, growing roses at an invading army! One supposes it possibly seemed a little self-interested when it was just a few of us, perhaps it even was. Yet when we realised just how much we might be able to offer, the project took on a life of its own!”

Al was starting to form the impression that a lot of the LIA's work was being driven simply by Penny's force of personality. Her enthusiasm for what they were doing was infectious.

Central to the League's credibility was their library, housed in a cavernous wood-panelled hall in the mansion's west wing. In the beginning, it had been created by simply pooling the founding member's private collections of alchemy texts. Now the League was actively expanding, seeking out and buying up copies of books wherever they could be found. “We've had particular luck with historical works that are no longer used on a day-to-day basis,” Penny enthused, taking them over to a line of glass-topped cabinets, “We're starting to think that properly studying the history of alchemy could be another thing that sets us apart from the State program. It's a terribly understudied subject, you know.”

Having spent his teenage years on the trail of the Philosopher's Stone, Al did indeed know, only too well. A few books actually drawing connections between the development of different schools of alchemy could have shaved months off that quest and raised a few pointed questions. No doubt Dante had worked very hard to discourage those kinds of studies.

His eye was caught by the next cabinet in the line. Rather than books, this one contained maps. _Beautiful_ maps, picked out in the finest of line-work and the brightest of colours, embellished with all kinds of interesting and, to the alchemist, _significant_ heraldry. The most impressive of all was about three hundred years old and showed Amestris as a blotch of land surrounded by a dozen similarly tiny nations, all dwarfed by the sweep of the Eastern Desert. But not the plain, unmarked space shown on modern maps – this desert was alive with imagined treasures. There was the fabled city of Siam-sid, the ancient hordes of the nomad sages, the lairs of the grand chimeras and, far to the east, the questing fingers of the lost empire of Xing. It was far more than geography. Every stroke of the cartographer's pen had been infused with alchemic ideas, each landmark taking on layers of meaning that formed, inevitably, a story about that terrible and wonderful red elixir.

There seemed to be no practical purpose to those layers. It was nothing so simple as instructions on making the Stone. Perhaps story really was the right word. Maybe it was meant to be a kind of history of the Stone. “Oh yes, that is a piece we're particularly pleased we were able to acquire!” Penny said, noticing him staring adoringly, “A very unique kind of text, very idiosyncratic of that period – oh, now here is someone I simply must introduce you to!”

Whisking them away from the display, she took them between towering shelves heaving with antique tomes and out into a space dominated by a globe inlaid with precious stones, where a cadaverous man with snow-white hair was in deep discussion with a petite woman holding a clipboard. They looked up, the man smiling, the woman giving a polite little bow.

“Marcus, Cassie, I'd like you to meet our guests!” Penny gestured. “This is Mr Alphonse Elric and his apprentice, Miss Noah Roma. Noah, Al, this is Dr Marcus Euler, a fellow founding member of the League and Miss Cassandra Panavia, our esteemed secretary without whom we would get absolutely nothing done!”

Miss Panavia blushed profusely at the introduction but Dr Euler took it in his stride, offering a firm handshake. “Very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr Elric. We've all heard a great deal about you.”

Now it was Al's turn to blush. “You have? Ah. That's very nice, but all those stories about the People's Alchemist really are about my brother, you know. I was there for a lot of it but it really was all Ed's work –”

“I'm sure that's true but he surely cannot take credit for the stories about you after he disappeared, now can he? A second young prodigy journeying around the country helping people with his remarkable skills! To say nothing of your work in defending Central during the invasion. No, young man. You mustn't think for one moment that you're not here on your own merits.”

With Al temporarily knocked speechless, Miss Panavia took the opportunity to address Penny. “My lady? I wanted to let you know that we have put Mr Clier's luggage in room thirty-two. Dr Boardman agreed to move to a different room to accommodate him.”

“Oh, that was very good of her. Yes, that sounds excellent, Cassie, thank you very much. One of our more exacting members,” she explained in response to Noah's curious expression, “Very particular. But that's no bad thing in a scientist, is it? We always do our best to make sure everyone gets what they need from us. That's the point of the whole effort after all!”

The secretary bowed again. “Also, should I prepare membership papers for Mr Elric and Miss Roma, my lady?”

Noah put a hand on Al's elbow but Dr Euler spoke up before he could say anything. The old man's smile widened. “That's rather up to them, isn't it?”

 

* * *

 

Paninya found them a big stretch of open dirt ground they could use for Michael's demonstration. There was a low, broken down wall on one side that the three of them – Winry, Paninya, Ed – could use as a bench. It wasn't the most comfortable seat but it would do. Winry shuffled closer to Ed and rested her head against his shoulder, just to see what would happen. He tensed for a few seconds then relaxed, leaning in to better prop her up.

Michael was out in the middle of the open ground, gauntlets glittering. As soon as they were all settled, he waved and hunkered down, arms held out to his sides. The arrays on the back of his hands glowed and then –

Winry sat bolt upright. When Michael had told her last year that he used the array on his left hand to fly, it had given her visions of him drifting gently up into the air like a balloon. The actual reaction was nothing like that. With a great _whoomph_ of in-rushing air and a blast of grit and dust, the alchemist shot into the sky like a missile. In seconds he was far, far above them, a dark shape whirling against the cloudless blue.

Paninya whooped in shock. Ed made a noise that was halfway between surprise and satisfaction. Winry just gaped.

Reaching the apex of his ascent, Michael swung his arms down. His gauntlets flashed again and another inrush bounced him up a little further. After that, he let himself drop for a second before transmuting again. A continuous blast of air formed underneath his plummeting body, slowing his fall. By the time he crunched back into the ground, all he needed to do was go into a roll . . .

It felt a little bit mean of Paninya to time her cheer with the precise instant Michael ploughed face-first into the dirt. Though from the broad grin he turned on them as he picked himself up and dusted down his clothes, he did not mind.

“How did he _do_ that?” Winry demanded to know.

“Rapidly created a pocket of high-pressure underneath himself,” Ed said, frowning with thought, “He used the two arrays to control the size of that pocket and to focus it. Not sure how he did it without causing the air to superheat though. Unless he was drawing on the heat to power the reaction . . .” He sprang up and charged off to start peppering Michael with questions.

“You guys know all the craziest people!” Paninya laughed, “Wonder how many arms and legs he broke learning how to do that?”

Winry shrugged. Ed and Michael were coming back towards them now, yammering away about energy flow, air mix ratios and array construction. They might as well have been talking a different language for all the sense it made to her but they were clearly deep in a complex exchange of ideas and that was something she understood. It was good to see Ed like that, alive with interest and engaging with someone. She'd worried a bit that he was getting left out among the gear-heads of Rush Valley. He just wasn't that interested in what made auto-mail tick and this was one town where that was the default topic of conversation. Now he had a fellow alchemist to talk to, the slight sullenness and irritation she'd sensed since he'd arrived was all gone.

She did wish she could understand more than one word in ten, of course. Maybe she could get Al or Noah to start giving her a few basic lessons just so she wouldn't be left feeling too much like a dunce when Ed started off into genius mode.

Winry was ashamed to admit it but she really didn't like being the least clever person in the conversation.


	3. Gear Train

Two days straight of travelling was quite long enough when you were carrying roughly four tonnes of auto-mail tools.

Ed had never been so relieved to see Central Station heaving into view. He was pretty sure that the ache in his arm port was down to hauling Winry's monstrous tool-cases from carriage to platform and back again, though Winry insisted it was likely just the weather. She'd offered to take his arm apart to prove that but he'd managed to talk her down. Mostly by loudly agreeing that she was probably right and it was stupid of him to even think heaving around that much heavy metal could even have remotely been a factor in his discomfort.

Then he'd felt sorry for acting like a moaning kid and ran down to the village bakery to grab her a decent lunch while they waited for the engine crew to finish fuelling up for the final stretch into Central. She'd told him that he needn't have bothered but that it was nice and she was very grateful for his help. He'd promised not to complain about it more than every hour after that and they'd decided this was an acceptable compromise.

Michael was probably forming the impression that Ed and Winry were insane. Which Ed counted as an improvement over the gushing hero-worship that threatened to come out every so often when they were talking.

He couldn't quite work the other alchemist out. The guy was talented, that went without saying given his ability to kick himself a dozen storeys into the air and get down again without a scratch. He was polite too, really polite, the kind of polite that didn't happen without lot of work and possibly being force-fed a book on etiquette. Ed had met students like that at Munich University and usually decided they were snobs, though he didn't get that from Michael. What he did get was a nagging sensation of . . . he wasn't sure what. Alchemists kept secrets from each other as a matter of course so he would have expected Michael to be a little leery of sharing too much. Only he seemed perfectly open and even eager to share his work. And maybe that was what threw Ed off. He was so used to people hiding behind code and complexity that he wasn't prepared for someone so open about their methods.

This was apparently down to the creed of the League of Independent Alchemists, who Michael was travelling to Central to join up with. “They're going to completely change the way that alchemy's done,” he explained, “I want to be part of that revolution.”

“Didn't you say that they didn't have as much resources as the State?” Winry asked, maybe thinking back to her first meeting with the guy since they hadn't talked about that in Ed's hearing.

“I did and that's still true but what they've managed in the last year is really impressive. Do you know much about that, sir – Ed, I mean. Sorry.”

It took a lot of insistence to stop Michael calling him 'sir' and he'd probably not have bothered quite so hard if it didn't just sound so _wrong_ from someone who looked about the same age as him, maybe even a little older. And he did know something about the League's work thanks to the persistence of their main representative who had managed to badger him into a couple of sessions of afternoon tea. He'd started jumping whenever pink shapes moved in his peripheral vision, just in case they were Lady Handley-call-me-Penny-Paige bearing down on him and ready to drag him into some kind of political shit in the name of free alchemy for all.

Not that there was anything _wrong_ with that, it was just that he didn't feel much like being the flash point for the war between the State Alchemists and the Indies that was surely only a matter of time away. For one thing, having met Lady Handley-Paige, he was pretty sure he would be on the losing side.

Anyway, whatever Michael's weirdnesses, the big upside was there was a third pair of hands for all Winry's stuff. He even offered to help them take the boxes all the way over to Gracia's house, which pretty much made Ed want to kiss him. Fortunately for his dignity and Michael's back, waiting on the platform to meet them was –

“AL!” Leaping from the train, he made a good effort at tackling his brother to the platform.

Laughing, Al hugged him back, just as tightly. “Good to see you too!”

“What are you doing here?! Pinako said you and Noah were on the road but I figured you wouldn't get here for a couple of weeks!”

“We got an invitation. I'll tell you about it in a minute – hey Winry!” Disengaging and shoving Ed gently aside, Al went to hug her too. They exchanged more or less the same disbelief and lack of explanation, then Al noticed Michael tottering out of the carriage holding one of Winry's boxes. “Oh. Hello.”

Hasty introductions were exchanged and then a porter showed up to chivvy them along. In a bumping, rattling convoy, they wound their way out of the station. Impatient to find out what was going on and to get rid of the Damn Boxes, Ed strode ahead to find them a taxi. The first thing he saw on getting into the open air was Lieutenant Breda waving cheerily from beside Mustang's staff car.

“The General thought you guys would need a lift. And he might have said something about making sure you actually bothered to report back to him today, boss.”

Ed rolled his eyes. “And what, Havoc was too busy to come drive the car?”

“Captains have better things to do with their time. He says. Com'on, let's get those things into the back.”

It was a pretty tight squeeze to get everything into the car and Ed, Winry and Al on top of that. Winry was apologetic about their obvious inability to give Michael a lift as well but he said it was fine. “My appointment at the League isn't until tomorrow, I've got plenty of time to find a hotel. Thank you so much for letting me keep you company on the journey.”

“We'll have to meet up again while you're in Central,” Winry told him, leaning out of the back window to give him the phone number for the Hughes house, “You'll need to let us know how it goes with the League at least!”

Michael grinned, nodded and waved shyly as Breda put the car into gear and they pulled away from the kerb. The last Ed saw of him, he was watching them go with a starry-eyed expression. Weird guy. Still, nice to meet another alchemist who wasn't a complete nut-job or bastard for a change.

“So what are you doing here, Al?” Winry asked. She was in the back-seat on one side of the big pile of cases.

Al leaned forward so he could see her from the other side. “Because of the League too, actually. They invited Noah and me to come visit them and . . . we did.”

Ed groaned and twisted in he front seat. “Don't tell me Lady Penny's got on your case too?”

“Kind of, I guess. She's very nice though.”

“She's damn persistent is what she is.” He scowled. “Let me guess: they want their own Elric to parade around and since they can't get me –”

“It's not like that! They're offering me a place, yes, but because of what I can do. Or that's what they said –”

“Hah!”

Al jerked his head and looked out of the window, setting his jaw. “I know, I know. But I have to consider it. I've got to think about what I'm going to do with my life. And since you decided for me that I'm never going to be allowed to be a State Alchemist, the League's offer is probably the only way I'm going to get backing any research I want to do.”

That stung. Winry frowned and said, “Hey Al, that's not fair –”

“It is,” Ed corrected, turning back around, “I get it. Sorry Al. I just don't want you to get dragged into anything . . . sorry.”

“It's OK, brother. I understand.”

“So what's the League like? What happened when you met them?” Ed was sure Winry was trying to distract them both and was glad she was there to do so.

Al launched into a long description of his and Noah's visit to the League's mansion house and Ed was happy to settle down and listen. He just wished he could escape the feeling that the argument had only been deferred to later.

 

* * *

 

Brigadier General Mustang was on the verge of ordering a search party sent out when the firm knock sounded against his office door. Sending the car to the station had mainly been meant as a friendly gesture but the secondary reason was still perfectly serious. Added maturity had not made the Fullmetal Alchemist any more inclined to give him the time of day and without suitable encouragement, Ed was perfectly capable of putting off a proper return to Central Headquarters until the middle of next week. As it was, he had kept Mustang waiting well into the afternoon and even then, the General was inclined to suspect the visitor was someone else. Yet the knock definitely had the distinctive volume of auto-mail knuckles so . . .

He would have to have a word with Breda, if only to find out what kept them so long.

“Come in!” Mustang called after a quick glance at Hawkeye, who shrugged imperceptibly.

And yes, in came Ed, resplendent in a uniform that was ever so slightly more dusty and travel-worn than regulations safely permitted. He marched up to Mustang's desk and snapped a surprisingly (for him) expert salute. “Major Elric reporting back for duty,” he barked crisply, “you one-eyed bastard control-freak.”

Mustang smirked. It was funny the things you could miss. “Welcome back, Fullmetal. Good to see a couple of weeks with Major General Armstrong didn't cut you too far down to size.”

“Hah, hah. Jerk. Hey, Captain.”

“Major,” Hawkeye acknowledged, not smiling in that way that made her eyes crinkle at the edges.

“Take a seat, Fullmetal.” Mustang waved at the chairs in front of his desk. “I assume from the lack of panicked calls from the stations between here and Rush Valley that your journey up was without incident?”

“It was fine. Heaved boxes, caught all the trains, met an alchemist who can fly. Fine.”

An alchemist who could . . . ? “Good to hear. Thank you for posting your reports from Brina and South Command. They were mostly legible.” He tapped a pile of papers on the desk in front of him, which he was fairly sure had nothing to do with Ed's reports but were in the right place for the gesture. “Do you have anything to add to the written summary of your mission?”

Ed rolled his shoulders and scratched his neck. “Not really. Didn't really get much of a lead on what was behind what we found in Brina. I think this Crowley guy was the most likely to be responsible but there's no way to be sure from the little evidence I could get hold of.”

Mustang nodded, thinking of the copied photograph Ed had attached to his last report, seven infamous ex-State Alchemists from fifty years ago, chief among them the so-called 'Silver Bullet' Alchemist. “So you are content to consider the file on the incident in Brina closed for want of evidence?” Ah, 'incident'. That wonderfully bland word that could cover everything from a pitched battle to a rampaging farm animal to, in this case, an underground laboratory stuffed with golems.

“I guess so. I think we should get someone to spend some time digging up that lab a bit more but I don't think there's much more to find there. And maybe we should keep an eye out for anything that might be linked to it, but it was all so long ago . . .” He trailed off, making flip-flop motions with his hand.

It might have been Mustang's imagination but Ed seemed just a little bit distracted. “Very well, I'll take your recommendation on it. Can I assume you will now be wanting to return to your ongoing research projects?”

“Yeah. Though I might need time to help Winry get set up here first.”

“So I anticipated. Don't worry, I've made sure you won't get called away again in a hurry.”

“Thanks.” Yes, definitely distracted if he did not use that opening to launch into a tirade about Mustang not stopping Olivier Armstrong stealing him away from Central. “You know Al and Noah are in town?” There was an edge of accusation in the question.

Slightly bemused as to what he was being blamed for this time, Mustang confirmed that he did. “Though before you accuse me of spying on your family, that is mainly because Gracia told me.”

Fullmetal grunted but did not otherwise react.

“Something to do with a potential opportunity with the LIA. Sounded interesting.” Because accusations of spying might not be entirely unfounded, if one chose to interpret 'keeping a weather eye out for' as 'spying on'. “If nothing else, it will mean a couple of extra pairs of hands to get you moved in. Oh, on which subject – Captain?”

Hawkeye was at Ed's side in an instant, handing him a heap of newspaper clippings and hand-written addresses. “We've been keeping a record of properties that might meet Winry's requirements,” she told him, “These are the ones that were available as of this morning. I'm sure she has her own list of candidates but we thought an up-to-date overview might be useful.”

Fullmetal's eyes were wide as he scanned the papers. “Thanks. I mean it. This – she'll be really grateful for this.”

“It was Hawkeye's idea,” Mustang said easily.

“Since you would be sharing the residence, we will need to run background checks on any property and potential landlord.” There was an edge to Hawkeye's voice that said woe-betide anyone who tried to pull a fast-one on this particular pair of first-time residents. “Please let me know when the two of you have settled on any firm possibilities.”

“Yes sir. I mean, yes Captain, I'll do that. Thank you.” Fullmetal looked slightly dumbfounded. Naturally he would never have considered that they might offer help with sometime as mundane as house-hunting. Mustang resisted the urge to rib him about that.

“In addition to the Captain's first rate intelligence gathering, here is everything you need to know about the current situation in Central Command.” He pulled a file from his desk drawer and tossed it over to Fullmetal. “A few details have altered since you last graced us with your presence.” Code for a couple of Major Generals retiring with ill grace, a Colonel going via ill-health and the head of administrative oversight of the State Alchemy program having a suddenly and _completely independent_ change of heart on several important issues.

“Right.” Ed flipped the file open, glanced at the first sheet. “Does any of this mean I get a bigger office yet?”

“Some things man was not meant to tamper with. Room allocation in this place is definitely one of those things. Besides, I thought you didn't have any problem with the dimensions you've been given.”

A death glare pinned Mustang to his seat. That was a relief. Whatever was bothering Ed was not serious enough to entirely interfere with normal operations. “Of your office, Fullmetal.”

“Right. No, obviously I don't have a problem with _my dimensions_ , just wondering if I'm gonna get any more room for books. So I can work out how much room I might need at Winry's place,” he clarified after a second.

 _Winry's place_? Interesting choice of wording. “Try to resist the urge to renovate that boot-cupboard of yours with alchemy. I don't want to get landed with the bill because you tried to put shelves in a load-bearing wall.”

Ed showed his teeth. “No promises.” Then his eyes happened upon the clock and he jumped to his feet. “Aw crap. I _did_ promise Gracia I'd get back for dinner. Unless you're gonna lend me the car, I need to start back there now.”

Mustang contemplated the image of Fullmetal behind the wheel of any form of motorised transport and had to suppress a shudder. “Is that your way of asking for permission to be dismissed?”

“Yes sir, Brigadier General, sir!” Another parade-perfect salute, slightly marred by the papers under Fullmetal's arm nearly spilling over the floor. “Or you can explain to Gracia why I was late for the meal. Your choice.”

“Out,” Mustang ordered, trying not to laugh, “Tell her I said hello.”

“Sure. See you later, Captain.”

“Major.”

Mustang leant back in his chair. “I wonder what's bugging him today,” he said once Ed was well-clear of the room.

“I would assume it is something to do with Al and Noah,” Hawkeye replied quietly, already back at work, “Given the tone of voice he mentioned them in.”

So he had not imagined that. “Yes . . . well let's hope it's something they can work out between them.” Preferably without demolishing the riverside district in the process.

“Yes sir.”

 

* * *

 

Al managed to keep his cool all the way through dinner and a good while after. Which was not _too_ hard, not with Elicia right there, being in equal parts adorable and terrifyingly canny. It was quite a thing to have a nine year old offer to braid his hair one minute (it would look nice with some bows in, apparently) and then ask whether the reason Uncle Ed was mad was because Uncle Roy had sent him on a dumb-ass mission to the North the next. She was decent enough to ask this out of Ed's earshot but it did prove that some traits might just be biological after all.

'Dumb-ass' was the least of the things that Ed had called his mission to Briggs but he was smart enough to dial it down in Elicia's presence. He was also smart enough to keep a lid on his mood while they ate, though apparently not smart enough to fool his youngest host.

Or to fool Al for a second either.

They talked easily enough about other things. Winry wanted to know the news from Risenbool, how Noah's training was going, any little thing that might have happened in the months they'd been apart. Ed described the alchemy used by the man who'd been at the station with them, the way he used air compression arrays to carry himself, how it reminded Ed a bit of Lyra's work only going in a completely different direction. Noah asked about Ed's trip to the North and about Winry's work in Rush Valley. Elicia wanted to know what kind of house Winry and Ed would be getting.

Al went along with every turn in the conversation, smiling and laughing and trying hard to forget what he really wanted to talk about. He helped clear the dishes and washed up while Winry and Ed dried and bickered about nothing very important. His fingers itched to dash every plate to the floor.

They spent the next hour or so helping with Elicia's homework or at least offering a wide range of 'helpful' input on it. This was followed by her attempts to evade her evening cup of milk, in which Ed was her eager accomplice. Around the time Gracia cornered them in the under-stairs cupboard, Al slipped out of the back door and into the garden. His head buzzed with unpleasant thoughts and he needed to get some air before he turned the coffee table into a time bomb or something stupid like that.

Oh hell, why was he thinking of that as an example? The last thing he needed was a flashback to Liore and Kimblee on top of everything else.

Taking a few deep breaths, he walked around the lawn, swinging his arms with every step. There were some days – some very rare days – when he wished he was back in the armour, free of all the fuzzy, mushy things the human body did to let you know you were upset. His head was pounding with suppressed emotion, his hands were hot and sticky with clenching, his heart felt as if it was going to pop in his chest. Even his jaw was aching, probably with the effort of not screaming.

It was all so stupid and – _physical_! And _of course_ the very thought of Kimblee had added in a bit of spine-chill and shivering fear. There was that awful memory again, the horrible crunch of his hollow metal leg giving way as it was transmuted into explosive. Oh that was just great, that was just all he needed, on top of everything else –

“Hey, Al?”

Ed's voice actually made him jump. He actually felt his feet leave the ground for a second. Stupid freaking fleshy body that didn't know when not to fire every nerve ending –

“What?” Al snapped, immediately regretting the tone.

“Sorry,” Ed apologised, looking like he'd just been kicked in the gut, “If you want to be left alone, I'll go. It's just . . . Noah said you were upset. And so did Winry. And Gracia kind of said it too. And . . .” He flapped his arms helplessly.

Al tried not to laugh bitterly. He really did. “Funny. Elicia was saying you were mad about something too. Which you are.”

“Shit.” A single, whispered curse. Then, louder, “Shit. Al, look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you mad over the League stuff. Really. It's just, I don't really trust them and I don't want you getting mixed up in some sort of pissing contest between them and the State –”

“Brother, do you think I'm a good alchemist?”

 _That_ caught Ed off-guard. Seriously, properly off-guard, making him gape and stammer and basically go to pieces faster than a dropped vase. “What?! Of course I do! You're a brilliant alchemist! Al, you're brilliant! You don't – you can't think I'd think anything else! You know that right? Right? Al?”

He let Ed's words stutter out, leaving his brother staring and wordless, doubts flickering in his eyes. It was a cruel thing to do but _damnit_ Ed was a complete bonehead sometimes. So much that it hurt because Ed didn't even _realise_ what he was doing or saying –

“Wait.” Ed put a hand across his forehead. “Al – is this – you didn't think – oh shit, Al, when I said they wanted you because they couldn't get me – that's not what I meant! I don't think that you're – you're just as good as me, hell, better probably! They'd be lucky to have you as part of their little club! Really! I just – I just meant that might not be why _they_ want to get you – I just don't want you getting hurt or –”

“Ed. Shut up.” Al waited to make sure that Ed properly closed his mouth, then breathed in through his nose. “I know what you meant. I thought exactly the same things about the League and I don't like the idea that this is all part of some stupid game either. It just hurts that you didn't seem to even think it was possible for this to be because of what _I_ can do. It hurts that that might be true.”

He kicked at a stone in the grass, sending it wheeling away into the flowerbeds. “One of them, Dr Euler, he told me it was about my own merits, about the stuff that I did after you went to the other world.”

“Well it damn well should be! I told you Al, you're –”

“I was imitating you!” Al took a tight grip on his right arm, not sure if that was to stop him punching his brother or to keep from trembling. “All that time, going around in your old coat, pretending I could just clap my hands and do anything – that was all _you_. I was trying to be you, the you I only knew from stories about what had happened in all the time I couldn't remember! And now people are coming up and saying it's all my own merits when . . . when I was just copying you because I thought it might help me find you! None of that was –”

“Al. Shut up.”

Surprise more than obedience stopped him from saying anything more. Ed dug at his hair then pointed a finger at Al's chest. “Without you,” he said, emphasising every word, “I would be dead a hundred times over. Because you are a genius who can transmute just the right thing in a crisis. And when you were trying to copy me, if that's what you wanna call it, you designed your own transmutation circles that would fit on a pair of freakin' gloves and let you do whatever you needed to do. You can attach _a bit of your soul_ to suits of armour whenever you feel like it! And even if we somehow forgot all that, you are the one and only person in the _entire history of the fucking world_ to have _performed a perfect human transmutation_.” He folded his arms. “Something I've still not forgiven you for doing because it nearly got you killed for good but if anyone ever even implies you're not the best alchemist who ever lived, I'm going to kick their ass.”

And now Al's body was going all mushy in a completely different way. Not willing to give in just yet, he threw up his hands. “Well that's great but if I tell anyone that, they'll throw me in jail! Hell, they'll probably throw both of us in jail if I ever have to explain how I know how to attach my soul to metal!”

“Just accept the complement, will you?” Ed's voice cracked into pleading. “Please?”

“All right. Thanks.”

“Any time. Really, I can probably talk about how much of a genius my little brother is all day long. If the League needs a testimony or something, let me know.”

“You realise that would . . . probably end with Lady Handley-Paige talking you into deserting from the Military, right?”

“Hey, for you, I'd let that happen.”

“I want to be part of it. What the League are trying to do.” Al dug his foot into the turf. “I've talked it over with Noah already. She's not sure what she would end up doing with her alchemy in the long run but she wants to learn more than I think I could teach her on my own.”

“And what about you?” Digging at his own patch of ground, Ed shoved his hands into his pockets. Just when had it become normal to see him going around in uniform trousers, the cavalry skirt swinging around his legs?

Al shook himself. “I don't know,” he replied honestly, “Not for sure. But . . . I keep thinking about what we did to try and bring mom back. What I did to bring you back. And some of the things in Dr Marcoh's notes. Not the stuff about the stone or human transmutation but some of the stuff to do with his medical training. The things he did in Xenotime and everywhere else.”

“You want to be a doctor?”

“Maybe? I want to help people. And I know a lot about the human body so . . . there's got to be something I could work on to do with that, right?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“You . . . really think so?”

“Do I have to repeat that you are brilliant and can do anything you set your mind to?”

“You didn't actually say that second bit –”

“It was implied!”

Al gave in. He let the last dregs of anger drain away. When Ed clanked closer and made as if to hug him, he returned the gesture emphatically.

His brother could be a bonehead. But eventually, he always made up for it.

 

* * *

 

“They said the rings are transmuted on the spot for every new member.” Noah folded the fingers of her right hand around the middle finger of her left. “The same design but the materials change from person to person.”

“Huh.” Winry rested her chin on her hands. “Do they always use metals?”

“I think one of the people we met, her ring was made of china. Porcelain?” she tried when Winry looked blank.

“Right! Interesting. So that's their version of the pocket-watch is it?”

“I suppose so. They did make the point that they have no official authority so it's a badge for within their group, not outside it.” Thinking back, that was definitely meant as 'no official authority _yet_ '.

“If each ring is unique to the member it was made for, does that give them a way of identifying each other? Could you do that, pick up on the exact make up of each ring?”

“I'm not sure . . . I think so. They didn't say that's how they used them though.”

“You'd probably run out of unique combinations of materials pretty quickly too. Usable ones, anyway. Hmm.”

Winry's face settled into the familiar frown of concentration as she worked the problem through. Not familiar to Noah herself, exactly, not directly. She had seen the expression once or twice but knowing what it meant came from borrowed memories. Likewise she knew an awful lot about Winry, the kind of details a good friend would know, yet those did not come from any intimacy the two of them had actually shared. Some days, that disconnect was more disturbing than on others.

With a long sigh, Gracia slipped into the chair opposite the sofa Noah and Winry were sharing. She smiled tiredly and sipped at the tea cup she cradled in her hands. “It is nice to have you all here again but it does make it hard to get Elicia to go to bed!”

“It's very good of you to let us stay here.”

“Oh, don't be silly, Noah dear. Really, you're all doing me the favour.” Noah was fairly certain that this was not entirely true but then again, she had caught the distant look in Gracia's eyes when she thought she was alone and the house was awfully big for just two people. “Though I must admit that your morning exercises are making it hard to get Elicia to school on time as well.” She smiled again. “I think we can add acrobat to the list of possible career paths.”

“I'd be happy to show her a few of the moves.”

“Which would make her adore you for the rest of her life and lead to the kind of playground violence that takes an awful lot of explaining. Maybe when she's a little bit older.”

“Is this before or after I show her how to strip down an auto-mail arm?” Winry asked with a grin.

Gracia chuckled. “So you'll be heading back to the Handley-Paige mansion tomorrow, is that right?”

“I think so.” Noah toyed with one of her sleeves. “They said we were welcome to come back any time.”

“Do you get to just sign up then and there or is there a longer application process?”

“There are tests. I'm not sure how it will work with me since I'm just an apprentice. I might not be able to join the League straight away but I think Dr Euler said something about support for alchemy training.”

“That makes sense.” Winry shifted around, pulling one of the cushions out from behind her. “Auto-mail mechanics can support apprentices because they do some of the work in the shop for free in exchange for their training. But I get the idea that's not really how it works with alchemists. Certainly not how Miss Izumi did it,” she concluded darkly, brow furrowing.

“They do sound like they're putting a lot of thought into the future,” Gracia said, “Speaking of which, what time did you say your first shop-viewing was?”

“Ten o'clock sharp,” The way Winry said it made it clear she was mimicking someone. “That's what the woman on the phone said. I'm not sure it'll work out though.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Just the impression I've got of the place so far. The first one in the afternoon sounds much more what I'm after.”

The conversation wound on for a while after that, with no particular direction. There was just the pleasant buzz of each other's voices, the smell of the tea and the simple comfort of being among friends. And any disconnect Noah might have felt between the images of Winry and Gracia in her patchwork memory and the reality disappeared as she simply got on with enjoying the company.

 

* * *

 

If anyone, up to and including a certain eye-patch sporting superior officer, had suggested that Ed spend the night back in the alchemist barracks rather than in the comfort of the Hughes family's best guest room, he would have quite cheerfully assisted them in _dropping dead_.

Sleeping with Winry was nice. The actual sleeping bit. Not that everything else _wasn't_ , but . . . there was something really pleasant about lying next to her, sharing her heat and listening to the rustle of her breathing as he slowly drifted off. It made him feel . . . content, he supposed. He hoped it made her feel the same way. Given that she always seemed to get to sleep before him, perhaps he didn't need to worry too much on that score.

There were awkward parts to it. A metal arm and leg would do that. With a bit of trial and error, they had mostly got that sorted out. Besides, this was Winry. The most she was worried about was unexpected collisions and the occasional very _cold_ foot. Motors and engine-oil were basically her chocolates and perfume, so that aspect of being with him was a total non-issue.

So yeah. It was nice.

Nice enough that he was inclined to be a special kind of murderous towards whoever was responsible for the phone going off at – bleary eyed, he swatted about on the night-stand until he found his watch – three in the fucking morning.

Winry stirred as he heard Gracia's light footsteps go past the door. “Ws'at?”

“Phne.”

“Guuh?”

“Nnnrr.”

In theory, it could be a call about anything. A wrong number even. Or good news. It could be good news that couldn't wait until a decent hour.

But when did anything good ever happen at three o'clock in the morning?

Ed was not remotely surprised when a couple of minutes later, Gracia knocked softly on the bedroom door and put her head around it. “Ed? I'm sorry, it's Roy. He's sending a car over for you. I'm afraid something terrible's happened.”


	4. Pendulum

The sight of the police and soldiers cordoning off an alleyway brought back enough bad memories to make Ed feel sick before he got anywhere near it. He swallowed and clambered out of the car, leaving Breda hunched over the steering wheel, sullen and pale.

There was no immediate sign of Mustang but he caught sight of Lieutenant Ross's boyish haircut bobbing among the soldiers supervising the cordon. She saluted as he came over. “Major Elric, sir.”

He returned the salute, Ross being one of the few people that made him want to do so automatically. “Hey, Lieutenant. General Mustang sent for me.” It was half a question.

“He's in the alley with Colonel Fiat. You can go straight in.” She hesitated then blurted, “It's pretty bad, sir.”

He did not doubt that for a moment. “Thanks for the warning.”

As alleyways went, this one was pretty unremarkable. A simple L-shaped space left between three buildings, Ed could imagine it existed more by accident than design. There were a few windows looking out into it but only one door, at the near end. Without the portable floodlights that now lit up the place, it would have been in near total darkness.

Mustang was standing a couple of metres back from the right-angle bend, Hawkeye at his elbow. They both looked far too composed and neat for so early in the day. Hawkeye had her head lowered and her eyes lidded, in that way that might make an observer think she was half-asleep if they missed the sharp gleam under her eyelashes. Mustang's face was turned away from Ed so he could only see the black stretch of his eye-patch.

Two more people stood on the other side of the alley, muttering a conversation. One was another soldier, with a short black beard and a colonel's insignia. The other was a middle-aged woman wearing a long, dun-coloured trench-coat over the uniform of a civilian police officer.

All four of them looked up when Ed approached. “Fullmetal.” Mustang jerked his head, his jaw tight. “This is Colonel Fiat of Investigations and Inspector McCrae of the Central Police.”

The inspector just nodded. Colonel Fiat, on the other hand, stepped forward. “Good to meet you at last, Major Elric. Been wanting to get the opportunity ever since you signed back on.”

Ed was unsure if this was meant as a pleasantry or a threat. “Right.” He wrinkled his nose as the truly awful smell permeating the alley really started to hit home. “What's going on? You said it was something to do with a murder, General, but isn't that supposed to be the responsibility of the civilian police now?”

“It is,” McCrae confirmed testily, “but we don't have the resources yet to handle this kind of crime without help.”

“What's that mean?”

“Take a look, Fullmetal.” Mustang's instruction was not quite an order.

Knowing he was going to regret it, Ed stepped around the corner.

It was hard to say whether he should have been relieved or terrified that it was not the most awful thing he had ever seen.

The worst thing was the stink, which he knew was likely down to a punctured stomach, left to fester for a few hours. Setting that aside the dead man looked weirdly comic, caught in mid-stride, his mouth hanging open in surprise. It had probably been over quickly. There would have been pain when the reaction took hold but the moment the first spike pierced his brain, that would have been it.

Disconnecting the part of himself screaming that someone had done this to a living person, Ed could appreciate the economy of the transmutation. It had been done very efficiently, each spike driving through a part of the body where it would encounter minimal resistance. The haste of the alchemy had compromised the construct though. He could see where it was starting to crumble at the extremities.

He had straight black hair like Mustang, the victim. A big man, well built, definitely someone who exercised regularly. His clothes were completely unremarkable, just a dull jacket and shirt, blue trousers, shoes. Behind the glaze death had given them, his eyes were brown. It was hard to tell how old he was. Maybe thirty? Not much older.

Fiat and McCrae had come around the corner as well, Mustang lingering a little way behind them. The Colonel from Investigations and the Inspector were looking like they expected Ed to come out with something clever. Mustang looked determinedly blank.

“I can't tell you who did this just by looking at it,” Ed growled, not exactly sure what they thought he would be able to say that they couldn't have worked out for themselves, “only that they knew what they were doing and there is no way in hell it was any kind of accident.”

“Clearly.” Fiat clasped his hands behind his back. “The Brigadier General was kind enough to offer a similar analysis.”

“So what the f – what did you need to get _me_ out of bed for?”

“Confirmation,” Mustang murmured, “Look around you, Fullmetal. Tell us what you see.”

An alleyway. A freaking alleyway at too-damn-early o'clock. A dead body. An admittedly inventive method of murder. One bastard General who would be paying for this at length –

“Huh.” Ed knelt down, left hand brushing at the ground in front of Fiat's toecaps. He glanced around, scuttled as best he could along the alley in one direction, then stood up and shouldered through in the other. Seven patches of discolouration, not the kind you got due to damp or stains. And, he noticed, bending down again, a couple of weeds that had been neatly sliced in half.

The ground then . . . and the wall . . .

Brushing both hands over the bricks, he started methodically running them back and forwards, up and down. Behind him, Inspector McCrae cleared her throat. “Is this –”

Mustang interrupted before she could finish. “Just give him a minute, please.”

Yes, a minute would be more than enough time. The texture change was subtle but definitely there and he could feel it flaking differently in different places. It might even be possible to retrieve some of the . . .

“You might want to stand back a bit,” Ed announced. Without waiting for anyone to actually move, he stepped away from the wall, clapped and touched the bricks again.

Electric blue light crackled along the alley, flashing this way and that along geometric paths, picking out squares and oblongs, circles and lines. The discoloured patches on the ground flared too, along with several more that the human eye would probably have been unable to detect. Ed followed the rushing reaction, mentally piecing together what he was seeing.

“Well that was pretty,” McCrae grumbled as the alchemic light faded away, “Was it in aid of anything in particular?”

“This whole place has been transmuted several times over.” Ed pointed at the wall. “It's heaviest in the wall but you saw it was down here too. The slight change in make-up from the surrounding material looks to me like someone was just extruding lumps of it. I guess that might indicate they were trying to create a trap or an obstacle course.”

“None of that appeared to be directly around the victim,” Fiat pointed out, eyes narrowing with calculation, “If it was a trap, it wasn't to herd him. Besides, why go to all that trouble if you could just . . .” He waved at the body and accompanying spikes.

“Good point.” Ed scratched his chin. “Though maybe all that was to stun him and this is just where he landed up. Or . . .” Squinting, he looked from the body to the wall to the ground. “Or this isn't the work of just one alchemist.”

Everyone looked at the body. “How closely have you examined him?” Ed asked.

“Not a complete search,” McCrae said slowly, “There are some obvious problems.”

“I'm betting you'll find an array on him somewhere.”

Fiat ran a finger under his bottom lip. “Someone attacked him and he tried to defend himself. Two alchemists came in here, one walked out.”

“I'd best get my people finding out whether anyone heard the sounds of an alchemy death-match last night, then.” Pulling a notebook from her overcoat pocket, McCrae started flipping through the pages. “Though it's all bawdy houses and cheap hotels around here so I'm not holding my breath. Is there anything more you can get out of . . . the murder weapons?”

Ed clapped again and touched one of the spikes protruding though the dead man's rib cage. “Basic construction, same materials as the ground.”

“Great, great . . . would you mind getting the poor guy out of there? I don't think I've got room in the ambulance to take the whole art installation with us.”

“Clearly this case is going to require the support of the Military, if only for the alchemy aspect,” Fiat said as Ed set about retracting the spikes without damaging the body any further.

“We can discuss that later, Colonel,” Mustang replied evenly, “Right now we should let the Inspector get on with her job and wait for the results of the autopsy.”

“Pretty sure I can already tell you the cause of death . . .” McCrae muttered. She closed her notebook with a snap. “I'll say good morning to you gentlemen and get my people organised. Can we keep the soldiers to help secure the area?”

“A-OK, Inspector. I'll come with you to instruct them accordingly.” Fiat snapped a salute at Mustang. “Brigadier General, I will keep you up to date with all developments as they happen.”

Ed waited for the two of them to leave, doing his best not to look at the many, many holes in the corpse now that the spikes were gone and it was lying inert at his feet. “You knew, didn't you?”

“I suspected when I saw the crime scene. I called you before I arrived here though. I needed you here to give your opinion. You're the expert at earth-moving, not me.”

“Thanks a lot, Mustang. You really know how to treat a guy.”

“This is technically in our jurisdiction. Alchemy outside of open warfare. The police have a right to call on us for aid.”

“And it's in our own backyard, right?”

“Right.”

He tore his eyes from the victim's gaping face. “Is this Investigations' jurisdiction too?”

“They're the logical point of contact with the civilian police so, yes.”

“Seems like that Fiat guy wants to make sure we all know it too. Or does the head of the department regularly roll out of bed for this kind of shit?”

“I imagine he wants to remind us we are here for our expertise in alchemy, not to make it our business to catch the culprit for him.”

Ed let that hang for a couple of beats. “We're still going to, aren't we?”

“Another murderer running around town using alchemy as their weapon of choice?” Mustang arched an eyebrow. “As far as I'm concerned, that's the definition of our business.”

 

* * *

 

Winry smothered a jaw-cracking yawn. She was sure that if she tilted her head, her brain would thunk leadenly from one side to the other. It was not a great start to a day of traipsing around Central asking penetrating questions about the suitability of different buildings for conversion into an auto-mail clinic.

“Are you sure you don't want another coffee?” Sheska asked for the third time.

“Yes! The walk's already starting to wake me up some more.” The next yawn got out before she could stop it.

“It's a shame Ed got called away . . . this is going to be his home too.”

“Uh huh.” It was more of a shame he'd been called away at three in the freaking morning. No, that was unfair. From what little Ed had been able to tell her on the phone a few hours later, it had not been anything that could have waited.

It also seemed that Sheska could not wait to get started on the house-hunting either. She showed up at breakfast time, quite a while before she needed to. This was, she explained, tactical. The less time she spent at home, the harder it was for her boss to get hold of her to cancel her leave.

Her enthusiasm made Winry annoyed that she could not summon a bit more energy, especially given that it was such a sunny morning. As it was the light just made her wish for a pair of dark glasses.

Oh well. She'd already written off the first viewing. There would be plenty of time to wake up properly.

 

* * *

 

Colonel Fiat sent Lieutenant Ross across with the police surgeon's report at fifteen minutes past ten. She looked a little wary when she handed the file over to the General, as if slightly concerned by his reaction to the contents. Ed saw why when Mustang shoved the file in his direction and he caught sight of the time the report had been received on Fiat's desk. So much for telling them about all developments as they happened.

He flipped through the printed forms filled with hand-written notes, taking his time to decipher the scrawled autopsy while Mustang quizzed Ross about the details of Fiat's investigation. Somewhere between the alleyway and Central HQ, it had very definitely become _Fiat's_ investigation, and to hell with Inspector McCrae and the police. It occurred to Ed to ask why the Colonel was taking such an interest, given he was hardly going to be able to court martial the culprit. Though maybe there was a question about that.

The surgeon's notes were pretty unsurprising. Cause of death was obvious, time of death was hard to establish cleanly under the circumstances but was estimated to have been two or three hours before the body had been found. Quite a long delay but it gelled with what Ross was saying to Mustang about that part of town not being somewhere people lingered to look into any dark corners. The victims possessions were the most interesting part. An array on a pendant around his neck, confirming that it was highly probable he was an alchemist. Loose change and a wallet containing neatly folded notes (for some reason, the neatness was important enough to be worth mentioning). Cards from local hotels and – OK, that one was definitely not _just_ a hotel. A plain gold ring on the right forefinger. And that was it. Nothing with a name, no unique or personal items save the array and even that looked fairly generic to Ed's eye. It could have been copied from any number of basic alchemy books. The man hadn't even been carrying a watch.

There was nothing there to help them identify the man, except for a set of places he might have visited. The police were already busy chasing up whatever leads lay along that line. Even if they found something, it would likely just be a name in a register and they would have no guarantee it wouldn't have been faked.

Which might all mean nothing more than that the man did not like to carry anything personally valuable around with him. Or it might just be the most suspicious thing about his death.

 

* * *

 

The first place was a waste of time just as Winry anticipated, with a prissy, self-satisfied landlady who didn't have the first idea what kind of set up an auto-mail mechanic needed. The second place was better, with a couple of nice spacious workrooms, but the flat above was dingy and smelt of lingering damp. The man showing them around was embarrassed enough not try to glossing over it too hard, which made Winry feel a little sorry for him. Still, she could not risk somewhere in which bad conditions might go through the whole building.

Arriving for the third appointment, the first one after midday, they were told the shop had just been bought by an ironmonger from Wellesley.

“Argh,” Winry muttered as they walked away again, feeling that it would not be very grown-up to shout her frustration at the sky, “And that one looked really good too.”

“Well, there are still two more places to see today, aren't there?” Sheska pushed her glasses up her nose. “Don't give up!”

“I'm not, I was just really hoping that would be the one.” A loud grumble echoed up from Winry's stomach. “And I'm starving.”

There were no cafés or restaurants on the street that she could see, which possibly meant there were downsides to that third possibility she'd not appreciated.

Putting her head on one side, Sheska did some quick mental cartography. “Well, we're on Grocer's Row, so it'll only take us fifteen minutes to get to Baron Mortlake Square . . . you liked that Cretian restaurant there, didn't you?”

“Did I?” Winry's mind was blank. Had she even eaten Cretian food in Central before?

“Yes, you remember! You didn't like that soup but the rest of it was great and you thought the waiters were really friendly.”

“Oh, is this the place with the stuffed duck statue?” She definitely remembered that, a big flat lump of gilded plaster that had more in common with some of the monsters she'd seen in Ed's alchemy books than any actual bird.

“Uh huh, that's the one. Though I don't think they liked you calling it that, it's supposed to be a national symbol.”

“The food was pretty good there, yeah. And we've got time – yeah, OK!”

Cheered by the thought of imminent lunch, even if it would have to be a bit rushed on account of the next appointment, Winry felt a little bit of a spring come back into her step. She glanced up at the sky, still clear and blue, appreciating the weather properly for the first time since they'd set out.

Just for a moment, she thought she caught movement at the corner of her eye, something moving across the dark slates of a shop roof. But it must have been a pigeon because there was nothing there when she looked properly.

 

* * *

 

They walked to the mansion house this time. Al was sure that Penny would have sent her car to fetch them if they had asked, which was the main reason he decided not to. He was not sure he could take the idea of being chauffeured everywhere by an obsequious servant.

It was a pleasant walk, luckily, especially with someone to share it with. He and Noah talked through various chemical reactions to pass the time, with several digressions into some of the more obscure ways in which alchemists chose to code them. Every so often, they would come up against something that, to him, made perfect sense but for which Noah had absolutely no context. It was quite interesting to map out the differences between their different cultural backgrounds based on those alone, though it did have a tendency to stop his lessons dead in their tracks.

The mansion house was as grand on the second visit as it had been on the first. There were, however, trucks parked in the driveway and lots of workmen busily unloading crates and palettes. Penny's driver stood stiffly on the steps leading up to the house, haughtily keeping an eye on proceedings. He doffed his cap as Al and Noah approached. “Good hafternoon, sir, ma'am.”

“Hello Mr Parker. We decided to come back to talk to, err, her Ladyship some more.”

“Delighted to 'ear it, sir. And h'it's just Parker, sir, no need for the mister, thank hyu.”

“Oh, right. Well anyway, good to see you again.”

George was still on duty at the reception desk. He gave them a sort of half smile and opened his mouth to greet them.

“Noah, Al, excellent!” Penny called from the gallery, giving them a quick, energetic wave, “I'll be right with you, I just need to take care of – no, no, my dears, the _green_ chairs are for the recreation room, not the lecture theatre!” She disappeared, chasing after whoever was making the faux pas with the décor.

Looking disgruntled, his moustache flicking out at the edges as he pursed his lips, George waved at some leather sofas set beneath one of the entrance hall's vast windows.

“I wonder how long it's going to take them to finish,” Noah said once they were seated.

Al thought about all the renovations Penny had whisked them past the day before, the full scope of the transformation she was planning for the place. “A couple of months, definitely. Longer to get everything up and running . . . it's really ambitious. Dry labs and offices are one thing but setting up proper workshops and research laboratories – that's a lot of work.”

Before they could continue that line of conversation, a ground floor door on their side of the room opened and the LIA's secretary emerged in the company of a slender, curly-haired man in a black coat. Al recognised him as Ed's flying alchemist from the train and from the way his face lit up, the recognition was mutual.

Miss Panavia's eyes flicked in their direction and she said something softly to Michael. He nodded vigorously and shook her hand. With a slight inclination of the head, the secretary went back into whichever room they had come from and he bounded over to the sofa. “It is Alphonse Elric, isn't it? I thought so! I'm sorry we didn't really have a chance to meet properly at the station.”

“That's OK, we were all trying to get somewhere.” Al got to his feet. “So . . . are you part of the League then?”

“Not quite yet, I'm afraid,” the other man said, a little coyly, “I've put in my application and done the exam, now they would just like me to give a practical demonstration of what my work can do.”

“When do you have to do that? I'd like to see it too, if that would be OK. From what Ed and Winry said, it sounds pretty impressive!”

“Ah, yes, that would be great! They said they'd let me know – I'm sure – well, if you're part of the League already –”

“No, no – um, not yet anyway. That's what we're here for actually.”

He included Noah in that and was pretty sure it was the first time that Michael had really looked at her. Even then, it was just for a second before his gaze went back to Al. The dismissal of his friend struck a sour note and he almost flinched on reflex.

“I see!” Michael went on without any change in friendliness, “Well, I'm sure you won't have any problems getting in! Oh –” He patted at his coat, then the waist-coat underneath and pulled out a plain steel pocket-watch. “I didn't realise it was that late,” he said, checking the time, “I'm sorry, I have to get going. Please – if you want to come along to the demonstration, I don't have any objections at all. If that's all fine with the League, I'd love to have you there. Now please do excuse me – see you again soon, I hope!” Deftly returning the watch to his pocket, he gave Noah the faintest of distant smiles and hurried away, out through the front doors.

Al frowned after him. He was going to say something to Noah but as he started to sit back down, he saw Dr Euler stop halfway down the left-hand staircase. His hawkish face was so grim that it took Al completely aback and his voice failed. Then Euler seemed to shake himself and continued down the stairs.

By the time he reached the bottom any trace of that dark expression was gone and he was all geniality. “Mr Elric, Miss Roma! Excellent, excellent. Can I assume that this means you've reached a decision?”

“Well, err, I did have a couple more questions first . . .”

“Of course, of course. Let us adjourn to my office. George, would you mind getting some tea sent up. Capital. This way, young lady, young man.”

As they followed him, Al could only wonder what about Michael Dorian's retreating back could possibly have drawn such a sour look from the effusive old man.

 

* * *

 

“And this is the cellar. You can see the damage best down here. Really, I don't want to put you off or anything but you'd better take a good look. It's not a little thing, I'm afraid.”

Winry followed the stout woman in overalls down the wooden steps, noticing immediately both the long work bench lining one wall of the room and how well lit it was. Clearly this was the main workspace and the lamps had been set up accordingly.

The damage the shop's current owner was talking about amounted to a large, jagged crack in the end wall from which a trickle of black soil was spilling. She could see the bricks sagging around the edges as the building above exerted its weight.

“That's a big hole,” Sheska said from behind her.

“Yeah,” the shop owner – Marla – agreed, “And it's getting bigger. I'm told by people who know about this sort of thing that it's not going to bring the building down any time soon but if it's not fixed, there's a danger that it will eventually.” She folded her arms and huffed out a bitter laugh. “Not sure I entirely trust to that assessment but there it is.” The lines on her face shifted about as she sniffed. “Look – you've seen the rest of the place, that it's not too bad, but I don't want you to get the wrong impression. You're a fellow mechanic and I'm not going to try and scam you into thinking this is an easy fix. I've had the quote from a builder I know and – let me put it this way, this is the reason I finally agreed with Eileen that it's time to get out of Central.”

Stepping closer, Winry put a hand on the edge of the crack, examining where the bricks had been torn apart. They bulged inwards too and it was easy to see that fixing the damage would not be as simple as pushing them back into place. A cloying damp smell seeped through the gap, filling the rest of the room.

“How much are we talking about?” Sheska asked Marla.

“Tens of mil. More than I'm betting a kid starting out can cover on top of buying the place outright. Plus there's the hassle of having it all shut up while the work's going on. Like I said, it's what finally convinced me to go. Eileen's been saying we should bug out since the invasion and with the earthquake on top of that, well – this was the last straw. I'll be sorry to go but there it is. I won't stop you buying the place if that's what you want and I'm not asking as much as I could, but . . . yeah, just make sure you understand what you'd be letting yourself in for.”

Winry mentally retraced their steps through the rest of the building. It wasn't the biggest place and it was set a little way back from the main thoroughfares. On the other hand, it was near a couple of other auto-mail shops, both of which specialised. That was a good position for an all-round mechanic to be in, which Marla had herself pointed out. And the asking price wasn't bad, wasn't bad at all. Only with the repairs added on top . . . Marla was right, it wasn't something she could just jump into.

But even as she said that out loud, agreeing with the older mechanic and thanking her for taking the time to show them around, part of her was making a note to ask Ed what he knew about cellar construction . . .

 

* * *

 

“Excuse me sir?” Sergeant Fuery poked his head around the door to Ed's broom-cupboard of an office. “The General asked me to bring this down to you. It's the police report on the hotels they were canvassing?” He sounded a little unsure about that. Ed wondered how much the rest of Mustang's staff knew about what was going on. Probably all of it, knowing them. Still, Fuery was definitely the one least likely to sneak a look at whatever documents he was told to deliver.

“Thanks.” Ed took the file, shoving the books he'd been reading aside with his free hand. Two hours of searching had turned up dozens of variations of their mystery murder victim's array and basically just confirmed that he'd been right about it being both basic and generic.

He flipped the file open. The first page of the report was covered with a hand-scrawled note in Mustang's handwriting: 'Jack Marlowe? Tim Perry? Ideas?' Scowling, he turned to the report itself.

Jack Marlowe and Tim Perry were the names the police had prised from tight-lipped hoteliers as the two possible candidates for the dead man. Assuming that he really had been staying at one of the addresses on those cards in his pocket and that the names were not just the first ones that some annoyed manager had pointed to it get the police to go away.

Ed flipped back to Mustang's note. Marlowe, Perry. No, he didn't have any ideas. Did Mustang think he might have come across the names while looking for the Philosopher's Stone? That was a big stretch and it definitely hadn't worked out. Still, better to have checked than not, he guessed. Anagrams maybe? Alchemists _were_ the kind of people who thought 'cryptic crossword' was an acceptable literary style . . .

He remembered Fuery was still standing in his doorway, waiting to be dismissed. Ed still hadn't got used to the idea that people needed to be told to go away. “Tell the General no, I don't have any ideas. Also if there's anything else he wants to show me, to damn well bring it down here himself instead of making you guys do it for him.”

Giving a weak grin at the thought of a Brigadier General ferrying files from office to office, Fuery took the file back, saluted and left.

Sighing, Ed picked up one of his books. Aside from looking up arrays, he'd been searching for a way to tell how long ago something had been transmuted, in the hopes it might give them a way to get a better idea of exactly what had happened in the alleyway. As far as he could tell, the little research that had been done on that subject would never work outside of lab conditions, so he was probably going to have to resort to inventing a method by himself.

There were many, many other things he would rather have been doing.

 

* * *

 

“You're looking happier!”

“I am?” Winry laughed and stretched her arms behind her head, one hand on the opposite elbow. “I feel happier!”

“That's good!” Sheska exclaimed, grinning back, “After this morning, I was worried.”

“This afternoon was better. I'm not feeling like it's all going to be a waste of time any more.”

“Good!”

They were on the home stretch now, walking back towards Gracia's house. Winry's legs were aching from a whole day trudging around the city and she was really looking forward to dinner. Yet she really was happy. It felt good to be getting somewhere. On top of Marla's shop, one of Captain Hawkeye's carefully collected adverts had pointed towards a nice place that was a little further from the hospital than she would have liked but was otherwise a pretty solid possibility.

So, she wasn't going to magically find the perfect place on the first day like she'd secretly wanted to. That was fine. The afternoon had renewed her faith that they would find _somewhere_.

“Do you think it will be OK if I stay a little while after dinner this evening?” Sheska asked suddenly, “I mean after helping with the washing up and everything. I've just had the horrible thought that Colonel Fiat might have sent me a written note to cancel my leave and if I can get back late enough, I can say I was so tired I forgot to check my mail box.”

Winry suspected her friend was overcomplicating things. “He's not going to know what time you got back, you could just tell him you didn't get it until tomorrow anyway.”

Behind her glasses, Sheska's eyes became saucers. “He'll know,” she said in hushed, fearful tones.

“Riiight. I'm sure it'll be fine.” Whatever the upper limit was on Gracia's hospitality, Winry was fairly sure that Sheska would not be the one to hit it first. Not with a couple of Elrics and a Rockbell in the house.

They reached the familiar street corner and turned down towards the waiting gate. It was still a gorgeous day but the shadows were lengthening and there was a nip in the air as the sun's heat started to go. There was a figure coming towards them from the opposite end of the street, turned to silhouette by the distance and the lighting but Winry recognised the broad shoulders and stomping gait immediately.

He didn't see them until they were all practically outside the Hughes house, which was his own fault for keeping his eyes on the pavement instead of watching where he was going. When he finally looked up, he jolted in surprise.

Winry leant in to hug him. “Hey Ed.”

For just a second, his body was tense against hers, all his muscles taut. But just for a second. “Hey,” he said back as he relaxed.

Sheska made a distinct 'aww' noise. “You guys must really be looking forward to being able to do that every day, huh?”

“Heh.” Winry could feel Ed's jaw against her shoulder as he grinned. “You have no idea.”

“Yeah,” she agreed and hugged him a little bit more tightly.

 

* * *

 

“Nurrrgh.” Mustang's fingers twitched with the urge to incinerate the phone in its cradle. He was _this_ close to getting out of the door. Last-minute calls were never a good thing, _ever_ , especially when it was already several hours after his normal leaving time.

Hawkeye calmly picked up the receiver and put it to her ear. “Brigadier General Mustang's office. Hello sir. Just one moment, please.” 'Colonel Fiat' she mouthed, inclining the phone towards him.

Shoulders slumped in surrender, he walked back into the office and took it from her. “Mustang.”

“ _Ah, sir, glad I caught you. I wanted to let you know ASAP that we have a new development on our hands. As of O eight forty this evening, we have two more corpses on our hands, TOD yet to be established.”_

“Deaths due to alchemy?”

“ _Yes. They're not any prettier than the first one, either. I was just about to head over to eyeball the crime scene.”_

“We can take my staff car.” Which Hawkeye had picked up the other phone to order up as soon as he had said 'deaths due to alchemy'. “Meet you at the front gate in five minutes.”

“ _Understood, sir. I've already sent Ross and Warrant Officer Bloch ahead to meet the Inspector. See you in five minutes.”_ The line went dead.

“Should I call Edward?” Hawkeye's hand was poised to dial.

Mustang shook his head as he put his phone down. “Let Fullmetal have a decent night's sleep. The crime scene won't be going anywhere and I can do my own analysis this evening. Probably.” He patted his coat, making sure he had at least a stick of chalk to hand.

“He might not be grateful you didn't tell him right away, sir.”

It was an observation, not an admonishment but Mustang still had to suppress the urge to wince. “Probably not but I imagine Miss Rockbell at least will appreciate the gesture.” He massaged the flesh behind his eye-patch, attempting to stave off a looming headache. “It's not like he won't be up to his neck in it all soon enough.”


	5. Repeater

“Titus Breguet, the Venomous Alchemist. Dieter Martin-Baker, the Iron Thorn Alchemist. Both ex-military, honourably discharged following the fall of the Bradley regime. Neither of them wished to continue their service as State Alchemists and the feeling at the time was that in the new spirit of democracy, forcing people to stay in the programme against their will would have been problematic. Both had totally clean records as far as involvement in the Military's worst crimes went –”

“And now they're stuck full of spikes in an alley somewhere?”

Mustang arched his eyebrow and gave Ed a sardonic smirk. “Anybody ever told you it's rude to interrupt?”

“Probably tried and I didn't let 'em finish. Am I right?”

“Half right. Martin-Baker was killed in the same manner as the first victim but Breguet was crushed by a wall. Not even a transmutation of a wall, an actual wall. It looks like someone blew out the bottom row of bricks and let it fall on him.”

“Sheesh. Don't suppose they killed each other?”

“Nothing so convenient. They were too far apart and at opposite ends of a complicated little passageway between two side-streets. The only way I can see that theory working is if the wall was booby trapped and there's no sign of any device or array that could have been set up in advance.”

“Right, cos it was never gonna be that easy, was it? OK . . .” Ed stuck a finger inside his jacket to rub at a twinge just to the left of where his auto-mail port anchored to his collar bone. “So did these guys know each other?”

“Fiat is working on that angle. We've got the job of analysing the residue at the crime scene and working out the implications of _this._ ” Mustang lightly tossed something on to the desk between them.

It was a ring, which immediately put Ed in mind of the one on the first victim's hand. This one though was of an intricate design, two parallel bands twining together around a circle embossed with the symbols for gold and salt, interlinked. “Isn't this . . . ?”

“The badge of membership of the League of Independent Alchemists? Yes. It was on Breguet's hand, so we're assuming it belonged to him. I confiscated it with Inspector McCrae's agreement.”

“. . . why? Isn't this evidence the police need?”

“Yes. It's also evidence linking the deaths of two ex-State Alchemists to the LIA. That is something we need to manage very carefully.”

“. . . political shit again?”

“Yes, Fullmetal,” Mustang agreed wearily, “Political shit. We're going to hold on to this until Fiat finds out what Breguet and Martin-Baker have been up to since they resigned and we know whether this is bad news or _really_ bad news.”

Just their kind of options. Ed drove a hand into his hair and resigned himself to another day of being too busy to help Winry find somewhere to live. “You want me to go and look at the alley.” Obviously. At least it sounded like they might have moved the corpses already.

“I'd appreciate your opinion. It shouldn't take you more than a couple hours and then you'll have the afternoon free.”

He shot Mustang a sharp look. “If you want me to get any kind of useful information out of another crime scene like the last one, I'm going to need more than two hours. It's not like all that reading yesterday actually got me anywhere and I'm not –”

Mustang raised a hand. “What you're not, Fullmetal, is a forensic investigator. No one's asking you to catch the killer single-handedly. We need your observational skills focused on explaining just how the hell someone might have gotten the better of two combat-trained alchemists and walked away without leaving so much as a stray speck of blood. You've probably had the most experience of any State Alchemist I can think of in using the environment as a weapon and that seems to be our murderer's tactic of choice. What you report back will be added in to the things McCrae's people scraped from the scene and whatever Fiat can dig up on the victims. Then we'll see what this jigsaw is starting to look like. In the meantime, you've only been back in Central two days and in the interests of keeping you here long-term, I'm turning you over to your better half as soon as possible today. Go find a damn house already.”

 

* * *

 

Parker's appearance on Gracia's front step succeeded Lady Handley-Paige's phone call cordially inviting Al and Noah to the demonstration of Michael Dorian's aerial alchemy by roughly ten minutes, meaning either that he'd already been on the way or that he'd driven over far faster than was sane. Al tried to decide which of these options made him more uncomfortable before pushing the question to the back of his mind. For all he knew, the big pink car had a radio telephone and it was certainly over-engineered enough to make that seem reasonable.

Winry asked if she could come with them to the demonstration. A morning viewing had cancelled and with Ed busy, she would otherwise have been at a loose end. Al was sure Penny wouldn't mind and said so. The whole point of the League was to open alchemy up to people, so surely spectators at the display would be fine. Parker seemed to agree, in so far as he ever expressed any kind of opinion on anything. Then Al asked Gracia if she wanted to come along as well, since it seemed unfair not to. She hummed and haaed for a couple of minutes and then agreed with a what-the-heck smile. With Elicia packed off to school and more help than she knew what to do with when it came to finishing any outstanding chores, she said she could afford to take the morning off.

So the four of them bundled into the back of Penny's car and off they went. A proper outing, as Gracia put it.

It made Al grin to himself. As if they were all going to see a show, which he supposed they were and that was such an incredibly _normal_ thing to be doing. Although . . . aerial alchemy. Well, they wouldn't want to break up the family tradition of being completely crazy, would they?

Penny was waiting to usher them through to the gardens, resplendent in a rose pink summer dress and a wide, floppy hat in the same colour. She was positively delighted that they'd brought guests and fussed over Winry and Gracia, making sure About two dozen alchemists and other spectators were already sitting there, chatting and taking tea.

It struck Al that no one was actually there just to serve the tea. Everyone just helped themselves from the tables at the ends of the stand or, more often, helped other people, passing cups and saucers around as newcomers arrived.

“It's nice,” Noah said when he mentioned that aloud, “Informal.”

“Egalitarian too,” said the now-familiar voice of Dr Euler from the next table over. He beamed at them. “We don't really go in for servants and hierarchies, whatever impression the surroundings might give.”

“Though it does irk Parker when I don't let him serve afternoon tea just the way he thinks it should be done,” Penny put in, passing a cup to Gracia, “Oh, Marcus, Cassie has had to move your study-group to the Blue Room. Dr Boardman requested use of the West Conservatory and given that she was so accommodating about switching rooms . . .”

“Oh, that's fine. I'm not expecting a huge turn out today. Ah now, it looks like the show is about to begin.”

Michael walked slowly out on to the lawn, wearing the same white shirt and maroon waist-coat he'd been wearing the day before. His gauntlets caught the light as he tapped his fingertips together nervously. Every so often, he sent self-conscious glances towards the stands or the few people scattered around the edges of the lawn. Al experienced a twinge of sympathy. He could not imagine himself being any more comfortable.

Penny tapped her teaspoon against the rim of her cup, creating an amazingly penetrating pinging noise that brought silence in seconds. “Ladies and gentlemen, I don't propose to make any long speeches but I would like to ask you all to welcome Mr Michael Dorian who has kindly consented to give us a demonstration of some air-manipulation alchemy of his own devising.” The crowd broke into polite applause. “Mr Dorian, please begin whenever you are ready.”

Michael raised his arm in acknowledgement then assumed the stance that Ed described from seeing him at work in Rush Valley. And then –

“Oh my word!” Gracia breathed.

“Goodness,” Penny murmured, lowering her teacup.

Noah gasped. Wirny just grinned.

Al shaded his eyes to get a better look at the figure rocketing across the sky. It was a more elaborate display than the one Ed and Winry had described, full of swoops and thrusts from side to side rather than just going straight up and down. Michael was showing off properly this time.

“It really is fascinating,” Penny was saying, “He must be altering the density of the air around his whole body to achieve that, not just beneath him. Perhaps even altering the composition too – generating a super-flow effect? Would that be the right term, I wonder . . .”

“Doesn't it . . .” Gracia stopped before trying the question again. “Doesn't this take an awful lot of . . . I want to say fuel but I don't have any idea if that's the right term, I'm afraid!”

“It would certainly take a lot of stamina to maintain the reaction – heavens, that young man must have a strong stomach!”

Twisting and actually managing to somersault in mid-air, Michael dropped back to the lawn, the grass flattening in a huge circle around him as he bled off his speed. He landed like a circus acrobat completing a routine, knees bent and heels together. The crowd applauded again, not politely this time but sincerely and loudly. Michael stood up awkwardly, eyes peering out nervously from beneath his now-windswept hair. His right hand found its way to his side, as if to massage a stitch. Otherwise, he didn't even look out of breath.

Al nudged Winry. “You guys were right, that is very cool.”

“I know!”

“You know, even if the flight aspect doesn't have any applications at all,” Dr Euler said to the person sitting next to him, “that kind of fine control over the air mix within a reaction is a technique with exceptional potential.” The man he was talking to had his back to Al so all he could see was a shaved head bobbing in agreement. Strange how pleased Euler sounded now when he'd looked so aggrieved on seeing Michael yesterday. Maybe it hadn't been anything to do with that after all.

Penny tapped her cup again and raised her voice over the throng. “Thank you, Mr Dorain. That was a quite exceptional display! Ladies and gentlemen, if you could just give him a little room and possibly some refreshment? Thank you so much. Now I'm sure Mr Dorian will not mind answering a few questions but please do be aware that we will need to make time to actually grant him full membership at some point. Thank you!”

“Maybe we should go and give him some moral support,” Winry suggested as a handful of distinguished alchemists descended on Michael with giddy glee.

“Sure.” Al pushed his lawn chair back. “Anyone else want to come?”

Gracia held up her tea. “I think I'll stay here. I don't think I could contribute much to the scientific discussion!”

“I'll stay here too,” Noah said, quietly enough to make Al pause halfway out of his seat.

“OK.” He decided to find out exactly how hurt she had been by Michael's offhand dismissal of her in the mansion foyer, if only to make sure that she got a proper apology later.

Then Winry grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him towards the group congregating around Michael.

 

* * *

 

It took Ed two and a half hours to do a proper survey of the second crime scene. Two and a half hours of crawling up and down peering at the ground and the walls with Breda trailing after him carrying maps and photographs of the bodies in situ. The stout lieutenant was surprisingly game for helping Ed re-enact possible murder scenarios though he did draw the line at having a brick-made spike shoot out and nearly poke him in the nose.

Ed waved a hasty apology and transmuted the spike away. Breda loosened his collar with a finger, the colour slowly coming back into his face.

Between them, they got several possible handles on how the fight could have happened. The patches of melted metal and chemical burns were pretty damn obvious as far as clues went but it was only when you were put together with the patterns of transmuted ground that the story started to become more obvious. Even without a method for dating alchemised matter, Ed could guess that Breguet had generated some kind of acid to defend himself and Martin-Baker, only for their attacker to raise a shield. Ed suspected that Martin-Baker had tried whatever 'Iron Thorn' was a euphemism for, drawing enough of the murderer's attention to get himself stuffed full of spikes. After that, well, it looked like Breguet had made a run for it – and then things got interesting.

“What about now?” Breda called from just around the squiggly bit halfway along the alley.

Standing on one of the spots he'd identified as being transmuted, Ed had to lean so far over to see the other man that he ended up precariously balanced on one leg. Doing that, he could just catch a glimpse of the collapsed wall under Breda's elbow. “No, the angle's still not riiiiagh!” He flapped wildly to stop himself pitching over on to his ass. “OK, this isn't getting us anywhere,” he decided when he was back on two feet.

“You're sure he'd have needed to hit the wall from this far back?” Breda strolled more properly into view.

“Not needed, could of,” Ed explained sourly, “Look, there isn't anything that end of the alley that's been transmuted that I can tell, so if the guy took out the wall, he either did it over there, in which case why did Breguet stop to let him, or he used a transmutation from over here. Only the angles don't work out for that . . .”

Breda looked over his shoulder. “Surely you could take out the wall from here, boss?”

“Yeah, well, _I_ could but I don't need a circle to do it. And even if I had done it, there'd be a trace in the ground, at the base of the wall. Instead it just looks like the bricks were blown up on their own.”

“Huh . . . about that.” Sticking a finger in his ear, Breda pursed his lips. “There's no powder burns on those bricks and the impact damage looks weird. It wasn't any kind of conventional explosive that did it. And I've seen alchemic explosions, they leave marks too.”

“Uh huh. Mustang said there wasn't any sign of a device or an array . . .”

Making an irritated noise, Ed stalked over to kneel by the pile of bricks for something like the seventh time. The clear space where the police had unearthed Breguet's body was the only obvious place in which the debris had been disturbed since the wall came down. Breda was right, there was no scorching or –

“It's eleven thirty, boss.”

“What?”

“Eleven thirty,” repeated Breda patiently, “And if you don't get moving, you'll not get over in time to meet Miss Winry back at the Hughes place.”

“But –” Ed made incoherent gestures with the rubble he was holding.

“Hey, I reckon we've got more than enough here to keep the Inspector and Colonel Fiat busy.” The lieutenant ran one meaty hand through the sheaf of notes he'd been taking. “Com'on, Major. You've got at appointment to keep.”

Throwing down the broken brick, Ed gritted his teeth. 'No one's asking you to catch the killer single-handedly,' Mustang's voice echoed in his head, the same voice that had said they were making it their business to do just that. Double-handedly. Team-handedly. Whatever. Some days he was convinced that getting his eye shot out hadn't changed Mustang one damn bit. “Fine! Let's go.”

 

* * *

 

The biggest pieces of the cup sat forlornly next to one another on the flagstone. They fitted together neatly enough but for the small pile of dusty fragments Noah had brushed into her hand.

She sighed, wondering what on earth she was doing. Coming out into the garden again was meant to just be a way to excuse herself from everyone's hair while Al busied himself in the library looking for a particular text on medical alchemy. The mansion still rang with the sounds of building work and after the demonstration party had broken up, it seemed as if every single alchemist was taking turns to rush urgently from one side of the building to the other. Miss Panavia's job as secretary seemed to be half consist of directing that traffic where it needed to go.

The cup was clearly a victim of the rush to get the tea things cleared away before everyone got back to work. It had fallen into the shadow of the stone walkway that edged the lawn, in such a way that Noah was sure it had struck on the lip on the way down. Now it was shattered, the delicate porcelain cracked apart like egg-shell.

Glue would have solved the problem easily enough but it would have left unsightly marks. Likely as not, another alchemist happening upon it would have fixed it. Or just thrown the pieces in a dustbin. Part of her felt she should be asking permission to do anything with it. The cup was not her property and she was too used to having her life decided for her for independent decisions to come easily.

It was more than past time she changed that.

Tipping the porcelain dust into the hollow of the loosely arranged pieces, she brushed hair from her eyes and brought her hands together. In her mind, she held the image of an intact cup, the chemical composition of the ceramic, the binding properties of the molecules. Energy warmed the length of her arms and on through to somewhere behind her breast-bone. Parting her hands again, she laid them gently on opposite sides of the cup's remains.

A miniature lightning storm burst at her touch, the energy surging from her into the fragments. They liquefied before her eyes, melting together into an indistinct lump that, guided by her will and intentions, reformed almost instantly. Shedding blue-white fire, the cup sat in front of her, pristine once more.

Magic. An act of science. A miracle to repair a teacup. Her fingers tingled with static and the alien sensation of matter transforming at her touch. Picking up the cup, Noah held it up to the light, turning it this way and that to check for any irregularities. As she did so, a shadow fell over her.

Michael Dorian's blue eyes were wide as he looked down at where she was kneeling in the grass.

“Oh.” Self-consciously, she got up and dusted down her skirt. “Hello.”

“Ah, hello.” He rocked back on his heel, as if slightly dazed. “May I, ah . . . ?”

Wordlessly, she gave him the teacup.

The way he dressed put her in mind of some of the students she had seen Ed with in Munich, young people who imitated the clothes of those much older and much more wealthy than themselves. They were probably both around about the same age yet something about him made her think of a child dressing up.

“This is perfect work,” he said, doing as she had done and holding the cup up to the light, “And porcelain is a tricky material to transmute with.”

“It is?” She could honestly say it did not seem to be.

Michael handed the result of her work back to her. He rubbed his ear, feet shifting nervously before blurting, “I believe . . . that is . . . I owe you an apology.”

Noah did not reply, simply waited to hear what he would say next.

“Yesterday, in the foyer, with Alphonse Elric . . . I'm afraid I . . . that is to say . . . I was rather dismissive of you. Given . . . well, on appearances and having heard you described as Alphonse's apprentice, I made some . . . assumptions. Unfounded assumptions. Obviously you are a very skilled alchemist. I'm . . . terribly sorry about being so rude.”

There was honest repentance in his words. Again, he gave her the impression of being younger than he looked. It confused itself with the impression from the day before, that somewhat awkward arrogance that gravitated towards what it perceived as the most important person in the room to the exclusion of all else.

Noah had experienced far worse insults than simply being ignored. “That's all right,” she said, “Thank you for apologising.”

Relief flooded Michael's face. He rubbed his ear again. “You're very gracious. I really am an ass with other people sometimes.”

The gold ring on his right forefinger caught her eye as it sparked with sunlight. “Does that confirm your membership?”

“What? Oh this? Yes, it does. Lady Handley-Paige and Dr Euler transmuted it for me half an hour ago. They've invited me to a meal this evening to mark the occasion.”

“You must be very pleased.”

“Must I?” He seemed to realise this was a strange thing to say for a blush rose in his cheeks. “I mean, yes I am, very. Slightly bewildered by how quickly it's happened but . . . pleased. Yes.” Hesitantly, twisting his hands so she caught glimpses of the arrays tattooed on his palms, he continued, “May I . . . would it be impertinent of me to ask you a question?”

“I . . . I don't think so. What is it?”

“Your alchemy. The Elric school of alchemy, I suppose . . . how do you do it? Without circles, I mean. How does that work?”

“Oh.” Taken aback, Noah did not know how to respond. “I'm sorry. I don't quite know how to explain . . .”

“Oh, no, I should be saying sorry, again. That was quite improper of me. You have your methods and they aren't necessarily yours to share. I understand. Please, don't think about it any more. I should leave you to your work.” He bowed courteously, the motion precise even while his voice continued to sound flustered. “Once again, I beg your pardon for my appalling manners. I hope . . . I hope that you might find the patience to allow me to speak to you again some time.”

“I . . . I am sure that would be fine.”

With a second bow and a nervous smile, Michael hurried away, leaving Noah more than a little bemused.

 

* * *

 

“What did you think of that place, then?”

“Hm?”

“What did you think?” Winry resisted the impulse to say it louder the second time. Given what he'd told her about what he and General Mustang were working on, it was not hard to guess where Ed's mind was drifting off to.

“Oh. Uh. It wasn't too bad . . . won't it be too dark for you to work in a back room like that?”

“The way everything's built in this place, that's going to be a problem anywhere. We'd have to set up some decent lamps is all. What about the apartment?”

Ed gave her that blank what-the-hell-are-you-asking-me-for look he did so well. “It was OK, I guess – hey, ow.” He patted his side where she'd elbowed him. “What was that for?”

“Just tell me whether you _liked_ it or not, would you?”

“Bu – I – all right, fine. It was poky. You'd run out of space for all your stuff pretty quickly. And the kitchen stank of burnt fat.”

Winry didn't say anything back for a good long minute, long enough to make him twitch nervously. “Err . . . Winry?”

“What do you mean, all my stuff? What about your stuff?”

“Oh – well I didn't mean – I'm not saying you're more messy than I am or anything, just that . . . you have more stuff than I do.”

“Riiight.”

“That's all I meant! Really!”

“Ed . . .” She pushed her fringe back, trying not to give in to the urge to tear it out one-handed. “Ed, you do get that wherever we decide on is going to be somewhere where we'll _both_ be living, right? It's just, you . . . I get this feeling that you want to help _me_ find somewhere to live, but you're not really thinking about you as well.”

His mouth worked soundlessly, going bug-eyed with – what? Confusion? Anger? Incomprehension? All three at once? For a second, she was sure he was going to explode into one of his old flailing rages on her. Instead, his face fell, followed by his head, until his chin was nearly bouncing against his chest. “Sorry,” he mumbled, “It's just . . . I dunno . . .”

“It's OK. You don't have to explain if you don't want to. Heck, if you want, we can put all this off until you're done with . . .” She lowered her voice to avoid being overheard by anyone else on the street. “Everything that's going on. It's OK if you want to wait –”

“No! No, I don't. Really! This is important! I want to find you a place where you'll be . . . happy.” He choked out the end of the sentence with dawning realisation of what he'd said.

“What about you being happy?” Winry asked with a sad shake of her head. What was she going to do with this boneheaded dummy of a boyfriend of hers? “I don't want us to end up somewhere that's brilliant for me but makes you want to stay away all the time.”

“There's no place like that if you're in it,” Ed told her firmly, putting his auto-mail arm gently around her shoulders.

Automatically, she leaned into his embrace, the motion as natural as walking. “Even so. I want to find a place for both of us. You get that, right?”

“Yeah, I get it. But . . . Munich was the longest I was in one place since before Mom died . . . and that was just a room to sleep in when I wasn't studying. Is there a bed and is the roof going to leak, that's about all I've cared about in a place for . . . ever. Sorry. I know you want more than that . . .”

“It's not . . . argh. It's not what I want, Ed! That's the point! What _you_ want matters to, OK?”

His deep breath whooshed past her ear. “OK.” Another breath. “OK. I think that last place was too small. There wouldn't have been enough space to have Al and Noah stay over, and the way we both sprawl out when we're working, we'd keep tripping over each other.” He grinned, sudden as sun breaking from behind a cloud. “And not in the fun way.”

Winry laughed. “All right. We'll take that place off the list.”

“Never tell Mustang I turned down anywhere because it was too small. He'll laugh the other eye out of his head.”

“Yes sir, Major Elric, sir.” She threw a very sloppy impression of a salute. Growing serious again, she said, “There was a place I saw yesterday, I was going to ask you about it last night but you were so tired . . .”

“Yeah?”

Shrugging off his arm, she grabbed his hand. “Better idea. Come with me. I'll show you.”

 

* * *

 

“Uh, sir?” A nervous looking Fuery followed the knock on the General's door. “Colonel Fiat is here to see you.”

“Good afternoon, Brigadier General!” Fiat swept in, Private Sheska hurrying along in his wake, her arms full of papers.

“Colonel”, the General acknowledged impassively. Hawkeye let her attention swap to him for a second, noting the slight tension in his hands, the way he leant back just a little in his chair. He was bracing himself for battle.

Fiat, by contrast, appeared completely at his ease, far more so than was fitting for an officer in the presence of someone who outranked him. From everything Hawkeye had heard, that ability to make himself at home in any circumstances was one of the man's favourite weapons. “I thought you'd appreciate hearing this right away.” He plucked out one of Sheska's papers, causing the young woman to dance about frantically to stop the rest spilling from her grip. “We've uncovered something rather interesting about Martin-Baker and Breguet.”

The General took the offered page. “Indeed?”

“Following an early agreement with the League of Independent Alchemists, all former State Alchemists wishing to apply for membership are required to file an AF-3 with Personnel and a H2-33 level clearance form with the SA-Prog Board of Research Security, a process that has gone with surprisingly few hitches.” With two fingers, Fiat tapped the edge of the General's desk. “Titus Breguet filed his paperwork a year and a half ago and was accepted into the LIA shortly after. Dieter Martin-Baker did the same a couple of months ago. His membership of the League is still pending, an issue of judging whether his research could have any wider applications than was stated in the initial paperwork. And this fellow –”

Reaching behind himself with unerring precision, Fiat took a pale manilla folder from Sheska, nearly creating a new landslide. “He was accepted to the League a month after Breguet.”

Mustang's eye narrowed as Fiat opened the file and placed it before him. “The Gilded Hammer Alchemist,” he read aloud. “Major Jon Folland. Our first victim?”

“So I believe.”

Rising in response to the General's beckoning, Hawkeye walked smartly over to his desk and examined the photograph pinned to the folder. A youngish man with straight black hair. It could very well have been the first body.

“I thought, given the linked circumstances of our second pair of corpses, it would be worth checking through the other ex-State applicants to the LIA,” Fiat explained without prompting, “It would appear that rather than a coincidence, we have a pattern on our hands.”

“Were you able to establish what these three were doing between their resignations and their application to the League?” There was an edge to the General's voice that suggested he was not impressed if a pattern was all Fiat had to offer.

“Some of it. There are gaps once they left the Military, obviously. Some F-7 requests to take copies of their notes from the archives, a few notifications of travel from Martin-Baker, he seemed particularly concerned about ensuring that he was not suspected of defecting to anywhere tropical. Some scattered monitoring reports that suggest all three travelled around the country for some months, though as far as I can tell, they were never together for any of that.”

“Curious that two of them should be in each other's company when they died, then.”

“Not especially. I understand Martin-Baker and Breguet were close when they were in the service, that Breguet even sponsored Martin-Baker for LIA membership. Seems they continued their friendship until the end. It's all in here.” Fiat waved at the paperwork, which Sheska took as a signal to dump it unceremoniously next to Folland's file. “Please feel free to check through it at your leisure, sir, we've taken full copies for Inspector McCrae.

The General's eye twitched a fraction. “Thank you.” His thumb bent the edge of Fiat's summary page into a gentle curve. “Do you conclude from this that we have another State Alchemist killer on our hands? A second Scar?”

“I conclude only that we need to get in touch with the LIA post-haste to find out what these three have been up to while under their auspices and to get a warning out to anyone else who might fit this possible pattern.”

“Might I assume you already have that in hand, Colonel?”

Fiat shifted his balance, enough to be noticeable, and cleared his throat. “As it happens, sir, I did put a call through to the LIA's secretary. However she informed me that the senior members of the League were going to be occupied for the rest of the afternoon and most of this evening and the earliest she could arrange an appointment would be tomorrow morning. I felt it prudent not to press the matter further until I had discussed it with yourself and Inspector McCrae.”

“Good call,” Mustang said, mouth quirking up at the sides, amusement at Fiat's inconvenience just barely visible behind the veneer of professionalism. “Speaking as the Military liaison between State and Independent alchemists, I think the only recourse is a personal visit to insist on speaking to the LIA leadership right away. We can't risk the consequences of not getting that warning out. You alert the Inspector. If we turn up as a deputation, we'll stand a better chance of getting past that secretary's attempts to deflect us.”

“Excellent strategy, sir.” Fiat saluted, with what Hawkeye thought was a hint of irony, “Thank you very much for your willingness to act immediately.”

“You're welcome. Carry on, Colonel.”

“Sir!”

“Well.” As soon as the door was closed behind the departing members of Investigations, the General casually passed Fiat's summary sheet over his shoulder to Hawkeye. “Nice to see I'm not totally dispensable.”

“I don't think there was ever any doubt about that, sir.” Hawkeye scanned the neatly typed lines of dry facts about their three dead men.

“The Colonel might disagree with you. Impressions?”

“Of this document or of Colonel Fiat?”

“Your choice.”

She considered. “This does seem to cast the killings in a new light. Three ex-State Alchemists dying within the space of forty-eight hours does not feel like a coincidence.”

“No. Especially since we're talking about more than three deaths here.”

Hawkeye raised her eyebrows as disconnected pieces of intel fell into place. “The reports from the South.”

“Yes. Now I wonder why Fiat didn't mention them. It's not like he doesn't know about them after all.”

“He doesn't want to draw attention to the possible connection.”

“Clearly doesn't want me poking my nose in where it's not wanted.” A smirk played on Mustang's lips. “Unless he wants me to do it on his behalf.”

“I'll call down to the motor-pool to have your car standing by, sir.”

“Thanks. I hope the Inspector doesn't keep us waiting.” The smirk disappeared. “The sooner we can warn the potential victims, the better.”

“I would say we had plenty of time to do that,” Hawkeye said, walking back to her desk, “At least if the killer sticks to the evening and early morning.”

“True. Not that I'd bet on that. Though that does raise an interesting question.”

He was right, now she thought about it. “What was an ex-State Alchemist doing in an alleyway at midnight?”

“Exactly.”

 

* * *

 

Brushing soil from his hands, Ed got off his haunches and turned away from the crack in the cellar wall. “Yeah, me and Al could definitely fix this up.”

Winry's whole face lit up. “Definitely?”

“Yeah. I'd probably need to do the maths properly before hand, maybe even ask Armstrong for a few pointers . . . _maybe_ . . . but we could do it.”

The big woman who'd shown them in huffed a laugh through her nose. “Must be handy having an alchemist on call all the time.” She was standing by the empty workbench, brushing a few specks of dust off the top.

Ed rubbed the back of his neck. “You know . . . I kinda hate to say this given what we're here for . . . but if you wanted me to get this fixed for you, I'd be happy to do it. That way you'd not have to move out.” He saw Winry's expression shift from startled by the suggestion to a solemn understanding of why he was offering. “Just say the word.”

Marla brushed some more dust to the floor, brow furrowed. She heaved a sigh that went through her whole body. “It's good of you to offer, kid. Really it is. But no. We've made up our minds, Eileen and me. We're getting out of town while the getting's good.”

Nodding, Ed looked at Winry, who looked back, those wonderful blue eyes sparkling. “Then I guess . . . I guess we're interested.”


	6. Balance Wheel

On the plus side, no one else had been murdered in the night.

Lieutenant Maria Ross kneaded the aching flesh under her eyeballs and tried to focus on the umpteen thousandth piece of potentially relevant paperwork as she hovered her pen down the side of it. Sleeping badly was an obvious consequence of two disturbed nights in a row and one she would gladly have traded good money to defer, especially when Colonel Fiat ordered her into the office an hour early so that he could consolidate his resources in preparation for a morning foray into enemy territory.

Even after a year or so working with the man, Ross was hard pressed to say if that enemy was the League of Independent Alchemists or Brigadier General Mustang. The Colonel was not a man to tip his hand before the very end of the game and he would meet anyone attempting to pry with a barrage of jargon that could stun a man at ten paces.

Not that she cared one way or the other. As far as she was concerned, the only thing that mattered was putting the murdering bastard responsible for the last two sleepless nights firmly where they belonged.

“Morning sleepy-head!” Denny Bloch grinned at her from the doorway, a box file in one hand, a codebook in the other. He wiped the smile off pretty quickly under the heat of the glare she sent his way. “I m-mean, good morning, Lieutenant, sir and I'm sure it's a very fine morning indeed and absolutely no problem for you at all. Eh. Heh.” Shuffling quickly to his desk, he made a determined effort to hide behind his typewriter.

Sighing, Ross relented. “Sorry. I was up at four and I didn't sleep a wink before that.”

“Tell me about it. I'm only conscious because I had two mugs of coffee on the way up here and I'm still not sure that helped. I could just be sleepwalking.” He sat up, alarmed. “Do I look like I'm sleepwalking? Can they court martial you for sleepwalking on duty?”

“I don't know about that but you sound like you're wired,” Ross told him with a slight smile. She found the warrant officer exasperating half the time but just occasionally, he would find a way to cheer her up without meaning to.

“So what did the Colonel get _you_ up to do?” Block asked, “He had me hauling around train time-tables for the last three months and getting him a new map of the South City sewer system. Said the one we had was ten years out of date. Or it might have been fifteen. I was trying very hard not to yawn when he told me.”

“Compiling any records we have on senior members of the League.” Turning over the page, Ross struggled to remember what the numbers scattered through the text were cross-referencing. “By date, relevance and . . . something else he told me while I was trying to keep my eyelids prised apart.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that our boss is a complete and utter – ly wonderful and charming officer and a gentleman against who no one in their right mind could ever say a bad word or –”

Bloch's manic rambling came abruptly to a stop as the footsteps in the corridor outside turned out to belong to Sheska, just as bleary eyed as the rest of them, the effect only magnified by her glasses. “I think I might actually die if I have to compile another list of former addresses,” she announced to the room at large, “Blood-loss when my hands drop off.”

Ross tracked her erratic path across the office with concern. “When exactly did you get home last night?”

Sheska turned a traumatised bug-eyed stare on her. “I didn't! I slept in the records room! I didn't even mean to do that, I was just here so late looking out old reports that I just nodded off between EL and FO!” A mortified flush painted her cheeks scarlet. “It was the Colonel who found me a couple of hours ago. Said he was very proud to see how dedicated I was to bringing the felon to justice. I don't know if he was being sarcastic or not!” She looked ready to burst into tears at any second.

“Deadly serious, Private.”

Everyone jumped as Fiat strode in, his hair glistening with a slightly damp sheen, his uniform pressed to perfection and a tray of coffee-mugs steaming in his hands. Without a word, he passed one mug to Sheska, one to Ross and took the third for himself. “Not you, Bloch,” he said curtly to the warrant officer's dismay, “Two mugs is more than enough for the AM. Got to think of the old CV system. Now drink up and then – priority on the details for Marcus Euler and Penelope Handley-Paige, please Lieutenant. Bring those Prev Addrs through to me please, Private, once you've got them all in order. Bloch – that map was older than the last one. Try again.”

The inner door clicked closed behind him.

 _Come back Colonel Armstrong_ , Ross thought as she sipped the standard over-sweet Military issue brew, _all is forgiven._

 

* * *

 

“So when's he going to be back?”

“I'm not sure, exactly,” Fuery told Ed, nervously shoving his glasses up his nose, “I don't think he knew how long it would take to, ah . . .”

“Properly put the fear of the gods into the Indies,” Breda muttered darkly over the top of his newspaper, “Since they didn't seem to be getting the message yesterday.”

“Right, that. He said these would, um, keep you busy for the morning.”

Ed gingerly picked up the topmost notebook. It was emblazoned with the symbol of the State Alchemy Programme and a title that proclaimed it as a work on creating the perfect garden by Dieter Martin-Baker, the Iron Thorn Alchemist. The next one down was apparently Jon Folland's epic romance novel, The Taming of the Rosy Cross.

He sighed. “Yeah, I'll bet they will.”

 

* * *

 

Al stepped back off the mansion steps in surprise. “Good morning, General Mustang.”

His surprise was mirrored on the soldier's face but only for a second. “Good morning to you too, Alphonse,” he said, inclining his head, “I hope you are well?”

“Very well, thank you sir.” Over Mustang's shoulder, Al saw Captain Hawkeye following him down the steps. “Are you here about . . .” He stopped himself, realising that it might not be smart to blurt out anything Ed had told him in confidence. “Uh . . .”

Mustang nodded once, so fast it might have been a mirage. He tapped Al's shoulder as he passed, bouncing his hand up into a flick of the wrist that was almost a wave. Hawkeye gave him a nod as she went by.

He watched them walk out to the waiting car, then hurried on up to the front doors, arriving just in time to catch Miss Panavia before she could retreat back inside. “Hello, Mr Elric,” she said, voice carefully moderated.

Al did not really know what the League's secretary was like yet, even after speaking to her a dozen or so times on his various visits. She appeared to be very focused on her work, to the point where any hint of her own personality was hidden away behind the measured exterior she presented to guests. That seemed a shame. He hoped she wasn't forcing herself to be like that because she felt it was expected of her.

He smiled as he said hello back but was unable to make it as bright as he would have liked. “Is it OK to ask what those soldiers were here about?”

“A rather serious and troubling matter.” Miss Panavia turned to give him a clear path into the mansion. Close to, he could smell a faint waft of chemicals about her, no doubt the side-effect of some alchemy or other. Through the open doors, Al saw Dr Euler, Lady Penny and a couple of other people talking gravely to a woman in a police officer's uniform.

“The murders?” That slipped out and the secretary’s eyes went wide, the first trace of emotion he'd seen from her.

It did not last long. “Your brother is under Brigadier Mustang's command,” she observed, impassive mask back in place.

“Yes. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything . . . err . . . do you know what the League is going to do about it or has that not been decided yet?”

“A general note of concern was issued last night and her Ladyship intends to talk to everyone in the lecture theatre in half an hour.”

“Oh, right. Yes that makes sense. Would it be OK if I sat in? I know I'm not officially a League member yet but . . .”

“I'm sure that would be fine, Mr Elric. Is there anything else I can assist you with at the moment?”

“N-no,” Al assured her, feeling suddenly like he was taking up far too much of her time with even a minute's conversation, “Thank you. I can find my own way to the library. I'd like to take another look at one of the Hermatic texts, if that's OK.”

Miss Panavia responded with a bow and glided away.

 

* * *

 

Turned out, epic romance was one of the most irritating ways possible of coding research notes. Ed was starting to think that Folland had just wanted the excuse to write a lot of smut. If not, the Gilded Hammer just liked the most lurid euphemisms for alchemic processes possible . . .

“Uh huh,” Breda muttered into a phone receiver across the office. His pen dashed across the paper in front of him, taking down whatever it was Havoc was relaying over the line from – Ed wasn't quite sure where. Somewhere out East was all the information that Breda and Fuery would share on the Captain and Lieutenant Falman's movements. Some kind of mission for Mustang, obviously. They didn't seem to know much about it themselves and from the frown on Breda's face, all was not becoming clear now that a report was coming back.

Ed yawned and fought the urge to throw State property at the wall. With his boots propped up on Falman's empty desk and an office chair leant back at just the right angle, he was as comfortable as he was going to get and it was still not enough to take the edge off Folland's attempts to equate the interaction of concrete and hydrochloric acid with a frenzied bout of . . . possibly kissing, possibly something more, it was honestly hard to tell. He idly wondered if he should just give up and ask the other two what a couple of the words actually meant. His plan to raid Falman's extensive stack of dictionaries had run up against the prudishness of the compliers. He could tell that was the reason because he knew what at least some of the words meant and apparently whoever wrote the dictionaries did not.

Of course, with Breda on the phone, he only had Fuery to ask and . . . well, the Master Sergeant was a nice guy and he probably shared that with the dictionary compliers –

Without warning, Mustang burst into the room like a thunderbolt, walking so fast his cavalry skirt streamed out behind him. Fuery snapped to attention. Breda glanced up from the phone and said something to Havoc that was drowned by the clatter of the General's boot heels. Ed thought about it for a couple of seconds and quickly returned his own heels to the floor. Where Mustang went, Hawkeye was not far behind.

Her expression when she saw him sitting there was bland but he would not have been surprised if she could tell what he had been doing by some sort of telepathy. There had always been something about Hawkeye that suggested she knew exactly what everyone had been doing right before she arrived and was not impressed.

“Get in here, Fullmetal!” Mustang shouted as he disappeared into the inner office. He did not sound happy.

Closing Folland's book, Ed raised his eyebrow quizzically at Hawkeye, who declined to say anything but stood aside to hold the door for him.

The General flopped into his chair and rubbed the skin under his eye-patch. “Is there anything interesting on the victims' notes?”

“Not really.” Ed sauntered across the carpet. “Mostly just about blowing stuff to hell.”

“I hear it was what all the fashionable people did to get into the programme. Never mind. I have a new job for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I need you to go to the League's mansion house and look through the notes our three corpses left there.”

“So the same job in a different place.”

“I believe the League encourages a more open style so there should be less decoding involved. I also need you to find out as much as you can about their movements and connections within the organisation.”

“Uh. OK . . .”

“What the General means,” Hawkeye put in smoothly, “is that he would like you to report back on everything the officer Colonel Fiat will be sending finds.”

“Uh huh.”

“We agreed,” Mustang said grimly, “to send an officer each to investigate whatever alchemic and mundane documentation the League holds on Folland, Breguet and Martin-Baker. Inspector McCrae is handling interviews with those who saw them last or might have an idea what they were up to.”

“And you want me to spy on Fiat's guy so he doesn't try to keep anything back from us.” Ed slapped his forehead. “What the hell is wrong with you people? Three murders and you're busy playing staff-officer leapfrog!”

Surprise made Mustang pull interesting faces sometimes. “Leaving aside the astonishing fact that you've been paying enough attention to military life to know what that means, I'm not worried about Fiat's ambitions, whatever they are. I'm concerned he's going to start a witch-hunt and sour government relations with the League for years to come.” His eyebrow dropped into a scowl. “Or worse. If I have to cheat to make sure Fiat doesn't inadvertently bring back a State monopoly on alchemy, then that's just what I'll have to do. Understand, Fullmetal?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He heaved the biggest sigh he could and posed like Mustang used to when he was being particularly sarcastic. “I'll get you whatever this other guy finds out and I'll even do my best not to piss off anyone more than I have to to get hold of everything those three ever wrote in that place. In the meantime, how about you do me a favour and find some way to get Fiat on our side instead of just throwing crap at each other from behind your desks, huh? I thought you were supposed to be good at charming people or something.”

“It's a skill that is much easier to deploy against people who don't uncover conspiracies for a living.”

“That'll be why it never worked on me. You expect me to share a car with this guy from Investigations?”

“At the risk of preventing an entertaining speed race through the streets, yes. The car's probably already waiting.”

“I'll get down there then. See you when I get back, I guess.”

“Oh,” he added, halfway to the exit, “Captain Hawkeye, sir?” No, damnit, he didn't call her that, did he? Stupid military ranking shit –

She didn't miss a beat. “Yes, Major?”

“I, uh, hope you don't mind but that stuff at the top of your in-tray is about the house Winry's – I mean, that Winry and me are looking at. Is it OK for you to do what you said with the background checks? I know with everything that's going on you probably don't have time but –”

“I'll get on it as soon as I have the time,” she told him, warmth and humour creeping in at the edges of mouth.

“Thanks Captain!” With a grateful grin, he dashed out, Mustang's vaguely plaintive cry of “I'm the one you're supposed to call sir!” drifting after him.

 

* * *

 

“I still can't believe it was you he sent.”

And Ross still found it hard to believe that Edward Elric was as tall as she was, even with the extra time to get accustomed to that. He lounged next to her in the back of the car, filling out his uniform and generally looking like a grown-up rather than the little boy with eyes too old for his face she had first met. There was not a little of his father in him, she thought, the same sort of bone structure now it was shorn of its puppy fat.

“As long as you're not too annoyed,” she said, shifting to try and get a little more comfortable on the leather seat.

“Why would I be annoyed?”

“Because I think the Colonel sent me because he knew the General would send you and he thinks I might be able to . . . use our friendship to get an advantage over you.”

“He told you to do that?”

“Not in so many words but he was definitely giving that impression.”

“Well I guess that's fair given that Mustang told me to spy on you too.”

Ross started. “Uh, should you be telling me that, sir . . . ?”

Edward – Major Elric – _Ed_ shrugged. “How about we agree to share everything we find out, tell them both and let them fight it out later. I just want to find this bastard before . . .” He left the end of the sentence hanging in the air between them.

“Fine by me.” She remembered the stink of Jon Folland's guts spilling out on to the pavement all too well.

They were met at the door by one Dr Marcus Euler, a stick-thin gentleman in fine, if worn clothes. He led them through the grand entrance hall with the air of wanting to get them out of sight as quickly as possible. After a few twists and turn through a maze of panelled corridors, he showed them into a well appointed study. There were two desks, one piled high with notebooks, the other with files and loose papers. “This is all we could find that might be relevant to this tragic situation. I had the honour of including Mr Folland and Mr Breguet in one of my study groups and if there is anything else I personally can do to assist your enquiries, you must let me know.”

“An honour?” Ed asked. He had been reasonably polite so far but there was an edge to the way he repeated the word. Ross watched Euler's face for his reaction, which was a perfect example of honest regret.

“Please do not judge them too harshly for leaving behind the military life, Major. They were dedicated scientists and were making great progress in their studies. The country is poorer for their loss.”

“What were you studying?” Ed's voice was lighter now, Ross noticed, though not what she would have called friendly.

“Mining methods, chiefly. That's my trade. Ways of extracting hard to reach deposits, transmitting transmutations through different mineral layers – you'll see in the notes, of course. I've always enjoyed collaboration, just never really had the chance under the old regime. Now that's all changed. Though it seems the world is still an unsettled place after all.” Adjusting his tie, Euler nodded at the books. “I will leave you to it. I'm just across the corridor if you need anything. I think Cassie – that's our secretary – will be along shortly with the last few bits and pieces that might be useful to you.” With another nod, he left.

“Trusting, aren't they,” Ross observed, “to leave us unsupervised.”

“Why wouldn't they be? These are their people who've been killed.” Ed started taking notebooks from the stack. “They'll want to help find out who did that, won't they?”

She could not tell how sincere he was being.

Turning her attention to her side of the room, she began to sort through the papers. The most immediately interesting ones were pages from a register, signatures indicating when the three victims had arrived and departed the mansion in the past couple of months. According to that, the last time any of them had been resident there was a week and a half before: Folland, staying for two days. That, in itself, was curious. If they were such dedicated parts of the League's work, why were they in Central without checking in?

Behind her, Ed exhaled, loud and abrupt.

“Have you found something?”

“No . . .” He shook his head, frowning. “No, it's not that. I just realised something. What Euler said about that group they were in working on transmuting through rock.”

None the wiser, she prompted him to go on. “What about it?”

“Just . . . at the second crime scene, I was trying to work out how – never mind. Sorry.” He went back to the first notebook he had opened. “I should check to see what they were really doing before I start guessing.”

A soft knock at the open door interrupted before they could get back to the task at hand. The slim brunet bowed to them before coming in. “Major, Lieutenant. These are the rest of the notes that Mr Breguet and Mr Folland stored with us here.” She proffered a handful of pages. They were a little crumpled.

Giving a wide smile, Ed went to take them from her. “Thank you for bringing them over. And thanks for sorting all this out for us. We really appreciate it.”

The secretary bobbed her head. “Let me know if I can be of further assistance.”

Ed said thank you again in a manner that was really quite charming and she left as soundlessly as she had arrived.

“Your side or mine?” Ross asked.

Ed flicked through the crumpled pages. “Looks like they're all calculations for – huh. This is probably yours.”

This particular sheet was not quite the same size as the rest and was covered with hand-written addresses. She turned it over. Two telephone numbers were scrawled in the corner on the back. “Not a great deal of context to work with.” Placing it to one side, she picked up an invoice from a West City hotel. “I'll see if I can find out what it means from the rest of this.”

They set to work.

 

* * *

 

Al turned the page of the heavy volume without much enthusiasm. He'd come in with high hopes of setting out the foundation of a thesis on medical alchemy only to find his thoughts become more disordered the more he read. Knowing abstractly how much literature existed on the human body and all its many diseases was one thing. Wading in and trying to plot a path through it was entirely another. There were a dozen different 'major' theories, not all of which contradicted one another, and a spectrum of lesser ones that seemed to delight in doing nothing else. Straightforwardly picking a subject to dedicate his life to was a great start for a plan. But it was increasingly clear that that's all it was: the start.

Frustrated by yet another reference to some seminal foundational study that he didn't have to hand, he slapped the book shut. You'd have thought researching human transmutation before he'd aged beyond single digits would have given him an advantage with this kind of thing . . .

Much to his surprise, when he'd finished rubbing at his aching eyes, the first thing he saw was his brother coming down the aisle between the reading tables. Ed had left his uniform jacket somewhere, leaving him in the black t-shirt he wore underneath. For much the same reasons that he kept leaving the jacket behind, he never wore the white tailored shirt that higher-ranking officers were supposed to have. It left his forearms bare and Al tried to work out when exactly Ed had stopped caring about covering up his auto-mail.

At first, Ed was listlessly scanning the bookshelves in that way that meant he wasn't really taking any of it in on more than a basic level of 'I am now in a library'. Then he noticed Al and his face lit up.

“Hey,” he said as he dragged out the chair across the table, “Didn't know you'd be here.”

“I didn't know you'd be here either. I saw the General earlier though.”

Ed grunted. “We're looking for anything that might be a clue to why those men were killed.”

“I figured. Found anything?”

“Maybe,” he said, more cagey that Al would have expected, “What about you?”

“Research and more research. I think I might need you to steal me books from the State Library.”

“Heh. Give me a list.”

Al lowered his voice. “Penny told everyone about the murders this morning. She asked anyone who knew anything about it to come forward to the police and said that the people should probably go around in groups until further notice. You think that'll help?”

“It's good advice . . . I hope so.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Al . . . I don't really want to ask this . . .”

“But have I seen anything weird going on while I've been here?”

“Uh, yeah . . .”

“Don't worry, I don't mind you asking. But no . . . at least, I don't think so. I don't know what's weird for this place yet.”

“No one acting suspiciously?”

“Not that I can think of . . . brother . . . ?” Concerned, Al leant forward. “You think it's someone in the League?”

Scrubbing at his hair, Ed winced. “I don't know. I don't have anything to narrow it down but . . . you remember what I told you about the second crime scene?”

“With the wall?”

“Yeah. Some of the research the victims were involved in was about long-distance transmutation underground. I was thinking . . . could you use something like that to collapse walls from range. From what I've read of their notes, I think it's possible.”

“But . . . that was _their_ notes, right? The victims?”

“Yeah, but they were part of this big group run by that Dr Euler guy – what do you think of him, anyway?”

Al considered. “He's quite nice. A bit more reserved than Penny.”

“I thought he was a bit of a creep. Going on about how honoured he was to have known Folland and the others. Anyway, those notes – if the murderer had access to them, I'll bet he could have taken out that wall easily enough without needing to get close.”

“So you think it's another member of the group?”

“Why not? It's the connection between the victims, it could be the connection to the murderer too.”

Tracing the embossed title of the book in front of him, Al nodded slowly a couple of times. “That makes sense . . . but it's not evidence. And anyway, I still think you could be overcomplicating things. Maybe there's just more than one murderer.”

Ed started. “That's a good point. Gee, Al, remind me again why I'm not still dragging you with me everywhere? Seriously, I need you around to tell me when I'm being an idiot.”

“Maybe you should start claiming me on your military expenses. One mobile idea checker.”

“Maybe I should.” He sighed. “I'd better get back to help Ross out with the rest of the stuff they gave us. I only came down here to get a feel for the place.”

“Is that Lieutenant Ross?”

“Yeah! You want to come and say hello?”

“Yes,” Al started to say, then changed his mind, guiltily reaching for another book. “No, that's OK. I should get on with this and I don't want to distract the two of you.”

“OK, if you're sure. See you later, Al.” Ed quickly gripped his arm and got up. “Just let me know if you, you know . . .” See anything suspicious, he didn't say.

“I will. See you.”

Right. As Ed walked away, Al opened the book, determined to try at least one more time before he gave up for the day. He shouldn't just sit there thinking about what Ed had just said and all the ways in which the murderer(s) could be linked in to one of the League's study groups.

With a sinking feeling, he realised that was exactly what was going to happen. _Thanks, Ed. Sometimes I think not actually following you around any more doesn't make any difference at all._

 

* * *

 

“So these are all the members of the group who aren't accounted for at the moment?” Ross asked, knowing the answer was obvious and knowing that the secretary knew she knew.

“Yes, Lieutenant. As you can see, we are missing a fair number of them.”

She sincerely hoped that was not because a fair number of them were lying dead in assorted ditches, back alleys and doss-houses. “And this group is a regular thing? Has anyone missed scheduled meetings?”

“I believe,” Miss Panavia said, stressing the word a little, “that only a part of the group was expected at the last couple of meetings. It usually runs every second Thursday. Dr Euler encourages the members to come along to every meeting but of course that is not always possible due to other commitments or travel.”

“Of course.”

“Even Dr Euler has had to miss some meetings recently. In his absence, Mr Lindau had the chair.”

Folding up the list, Ross thanked her. “You've been very helpful.”

“We want to see this criminal brought to justice, Lieutenant. We are very grateful for your efforts to bring that about.”

Ed, who had been silent through the entire exchange, stirred from his post leaning against one of the desks. “We'll get them. Don't worry about that.”

“Mm.” With an almost-smile on her lips, Miss Panavia gave one of her little bows. “Please let me know when you are ready to depart.”

“Can I see?” Ed asked once they were alone again.

Ross handed over the list and hunted around for the registers she had been examining earlier. “I think it tallies with what I was – oh. That's interesting. The last two names – Alex Westland and Jill Villiers?”

“What about them?”

“They have the same pattern of attendance as Breguet, more or less down to the day.”

“And now they're missing . . . huh. Another coincidence.”

“We seem to have a whole pile of them, don't we, sir?”

“Yeah. We do.” He sounded as grim as Ross felt.

 

* * *

 

As soon as he was done reporting back on his and Ross' findings to the General – or actually, when Hawkeye interrupted saying the Prime Minister was on the other line – Ed headed back to the second alleyway. He told Mustang he wanted to double-check something against the notes from Euler's study-group, though he didn't specify what exactly he was looking for. Mustang was smart, he'd figure it out.

The police were keeping the crime-scene cordoned off but were no longer actively guarding it. It was easy enough to duck under the cordon and start picking through the remains of the collapsed wall. He turned over as many bricks as he could before going to take a closer look at what was left of the foundations, going slowly from one end of the broken section to the next.

Nothing. There was no evidence at all of the kind of directed, long-range transmutation that the group had been working to develop. _Damn_.

So much for that idea, then. More than a little frustrated not to be able to add another 'coincidence' into the mix, he stomped back to the street and dithered on the pavement, wondering whether he should head back to Headquarters or just go back to Gracia's. It was getting towards the end of the afternoon and he could have gotten more done at his desk, yet his head was in sore need of clearing. He decided the best thing to do would be to walk around the city for a while, just for an hour or so until he'd shaken off the fug of a day spent peering at bad hand-writing and baked clay. It would help get his thoughts in order.

He did not pay a lot of attention to where he was going. Streets in Central tended to look much the same wherever in the city he was, so that wasn't much of a loss. Keeping to an even pace, it was easy to cover most of the district in about half an hour. People and places blurred along at the edge of his vision while his mind turned the last couple of days around and around, ideas slotting together and flying apart, two or three at a time. He engineered the plots of a dozen mystery novels while he was at it, but nothing that seemed like a solid hypothesis for what was actually going on. It occurred to him that he should probably have waited around in Mustang's office long enough to hear if anything had come out of everyone else's investigations. He certainly wasn't getting far enough with the pieces he had –

“Excuse me?” Hurrying footsteps came alongside him. “M-mr Elric?”

Michael Dorian, his black overcoat slung over his shoulder, hesitantly lifted a hand in greeting. “I thought it was you.”

Ed was tempted to ask how many other State Alchemists with long blond hair and an auto-mail right arm he thought there were. Some semblance of politeness stopped him. “Yeah, it's me. What can I do for you?”

“Oh, n-nothing. I . . . was just trying to be . . . well . . .”

“Argh.” Ed groaned and contemplated eating his foot. “Sorry, you were just being friendly, right? Didn't mean to sound annoyed, it's just one of those days.” One of those weeks, he corrected to himself.

“That's all right. You looked deep in thought, I shouldn't have interrupted.”

“No, it's OK. I could probably use being interrupted. How're you? Al told me you'd been accepted into the League. Congratulations!”

“Thank you. I'm well.” Michael scratched his ear. “I suppose I am anyway. It's great, I've achieved exactly what I came here to do. I . . . didn't expect it to make me a target though.”

“Hm. Yeah. I guess you wouldn't have.”

“I never thought I'd have to worry about . . . being murdered.”

“I know what you mean.” Grim humour made Ed give a bleak chuckle. “I've actually been in the same kind of situation.”

“The State Alchemist Killer, you mean? From a few years ago?”

“Yeah. Huh. I thought the Military kept that pretty well under wraps.”

“Perhaps at the time but the newspapers really had a field-day when it came out after . . . everything.”

“Huh. Guess I missed that.”

They walked on together, taking a turning down a side-street as Michael said, “I should have put that together myself, I suppose. From the timing. Sorry.”

“That's OK. Don't worry about – what's so funny?”

“Oh, nothing.” His smile faded. “It's just occurred to me that all that time on the train and all we talked about was alchemy. We didn't really touch on . . . well, our lives beyond that. Our families.”

“Eh. Not much to tell about my family,” Ed said, which was both a true and a lie depending on how you chose to think about it, “My dad was never around much after I was three. My mom died a few years later. Al's the only family I've got now.”

“Really? From the little I've seen, I'm not sure that's true.”

Ed blinked. OK, so there was Winry. And Noah. And Auntie Pinako And Gracia and Elicia, he supposed. And Sheska and Paninya, in a weird way. And even the Bastard General and Hawkeye and Havoc and company, if you wanted to stretch the point. And – “Huh. Guess you're right. Still getting used to . . . lots of changes. What about you? What's your story?”

“Not much to tell either, I'm afraid. My parents were killed in an accident when I was seven. I was brought up by my Grandmother.” Closing his eyes in what looked like grief, he pushed a thumb into his waist-coat pocket. “She taught me alchemy. It's because of her I'm here today.”

“Is she . . . ?”

“Yes. Three, four years ago now. She was . . . strict. But I can't say her death didn't leave a hole in my life.” He opened his eyes. “I'm only starting to realise how big it is.”

 _Hohenheim's body spilling a cascade of blood as Envy's jaws snapped shut around him. Light consuming them both._ Ed's heart knotted at the memory. He would, he thought, always hate his dad for everything the old bastard had done, all the lives lost to his ambition. And Ed'd not known anything other than hate from Envy, the monster meant to have been Hohenheim's first son. Perhaps with enough time, he could have saved both of them, somehow. Even found a way to forgive them. Probably not. But they were gone and now he'd never know one way or the other.

“That happens,” was all he said, dragging himself away from that particular abyss of regret. The street they'd come out on to was deserted and he recognised why when he looked at the buildings. Covered in scaffolding, empty doors and windows gaping mutely at the world, most of the shops and houses were still only half-built. It must have been one of the parts of Central that still hadn't been completely rebuilt after – well, whichever of the disasters brought it down in the first place. There were a few places like that, where the money had run out or the ground had turned out to be unsound and building work had been suspended for a year or more. Ghost towns in the middle of the city.

“You know where we are?” he asked Michael.

“Uh . . . yes, actually. My hotel's just along there.” He pointed ahead. “I'm moving into a room at the mansion house so I need to pick up my things.”

“Right. Hey . . . shouldn't you have been with someone else? I thought the League was advising its members to go around in groups?”

Michael blushed slightly. “Yes, but I . . . I didn't want to put anyone out. It's broad daylight after all.”

A dull boom sounded out at almost the exact instant he finished speaking. The smell of gunpowder and electricity assaulted Ed's nose. Someone stepped out in front of them. Boots crunched on loose stones behind them.

He had just enough time to think that it was really a terrible time for Al to turn out to be right again before a heavy metal net dropped out of the sky and engulfed him and Michael both.


	7. Impulse Pin

Ed clapped and twisted. His hands connected with the net as it fell over his head. The transmutation shredded it in seconds, peeling back the woven steel and turning it outwards in a flurry of needles.

Not too fast though, or with too much force. _He_ didn't want to kill anyone.

The man in front, big, swarthy and bald as an egg, threw up his arm to cover his eyes. At the same time though, he dropped to one knee and struck the ground with his open hand. Purple light spilled from his sleeve and the pavement became a nest of snaking tendrils, each ending in a vicious barb. They shot up and plunged down with killing force.

Amateur.

Easily evading the attack, Ed slapped the resulting arches and sent a wave of spikes shooting out of the other end, right back into baldy's face. He yelped and scooted just far enough to realise that his coat tails had been firmly pinned down.

A line of torn-up earth slashed along the pavement, nearly cutting clean through Ed's right foot. Wrenching his leg away, he spun to face the second attacker. He got a brief impression of a spindly figure in a hooded cloak before a colossal blast of wind slammed into the man and catapulted him backwards.

Beside Ed, Michael advanced grimly, left hand extended. Of course. The air-manipulation array he'd got tattooed there, the prototype for the ones he put on his gauntlets. As a good measure, Ed transmuted a hand out of the road to slap down on the helpless would-be murderer and pin him –

“Look out!” Michael shoved him hard, pushing him out of the way as Baldy created more dagger-snakes to try and impale them. He'd ripped his coat to get free and looked furious about it. Ed sprang and rolled, staying just ahead of the other alchemist's efforts to impale him. In his peripheral vision, he saw Michael springing in the opposite direction, overcoat fluttering from his shoulder as he dodged.

An explosion rocked the street, pitching Ed off his feet as he made a grab for Baldy's transmuting arm. The world went ass over tea-kettle –

And someone landed heavily on his back. Hard metal clonked him on the head. Stars filled his vision in painful constellations. He flailed with his auto-mail arm, landing a satisfying-sounding blow on whoever had jumped him. The weight lifted, thrown off. Ed sprang up, expecting to see the guy in the hood. But no. It was a woman: short red hair, a scar down her face, dressed in what looked like surplus military gear.

Her arms were auto-mail, heavy-duty, the kind that was half-arm, half-cannon. So she must have been the one who launched the net.

With a snarl, she lashed out at him, a dagger appearing in her hand. He slipped backwards, fighting not to go off-balance. There wasn't enough room to clap but there was nothing stopping him landing a punch on her chin.

As she reeled backwards, he swung around, trying to get line of sight on Baldy again. There, bouncing around the jets of air Michael was sending his way. Michael himself was crouching down, leaning on his right hand. Lines of light curved from under his touch, etching a transmutation circle across the road. Before Baldy could get out of the way, the array activated and filled the air around him with stinging gas.

The woman came at Ed again, trying to brain him with her arm-cannons. She was damn fast and easily as strong as he was. They locked together, her dagger caught on his auto-mail, his flesh-and-blood muscles straining to force her free hand away from his neck. But she'd not counted on his metal leg. It gave him the leverage to fling her over his shoulder, straight into the lingering wisps of Michael's gas.

Baldy, still clawing at his eyes, ran smack into his pal as she landed.

“OK, that's enough!” Ed clapped and raised a wall to hem them in. “Give up now and I won't beat you senseless before I haul your asses to jail!” Baldy and Metal-Girl faced him with identical sneers. Yeah, he figured they weren't the giving up types. “Yeah, well, don't say I didn't give you a chance!” He brought his hands togeth –

Metal-Girl's arms snapped up and the barrels of the cannons spat fire. As Ed danced around the missiles, Baldy blasted a hole in the barricade. Without hesitation, he fled through the gap, his girlfriend hard on his heels.

Ed pounded after them, quickly enough that he caught sight of them disappearing into one of the half-finished houses. They must have thought that going that way would get him off their tails. _Nice try_. He chased them inside, jumping back to avoid another rocket. It had come from the staircase. They were running to the first floor – maybe another move to throw him off. Or they wanted to drop the building on him.

He pelted upstairs. Crackling energy announced that Baldy had made them a bridge out to the next house over. Ed blew it apart from the other side of the room before they could use it to escape.

“Seriously bad move, kid,” Metal-Girl hissed. And yeah, he'd left himself wide open to her now. All she had to do was fire and –

And he grinned, looking past them out through the gaping space that would one day be a window overlooking the street.

Instinctively, they followed his gaze, just in time to see Michael rising up on a pillar of stone, right hand pressed against an active array, left hand aimed straight at them.

The blast of air picked them up as easily as their hooded friend, blasting them hard against the back wall. Ed ducked out of their way, clapped and wrapped them up tight in the building's wiring.

Michael stepped lightly through the unfinished window, air-array still primed. Ed gave him a little wave. “Nice timing. You OK?”

“Are you?” There was a line of blood crawling down from a cut in Michael's forehead and his sleeves were ripped. He must have been hit by flying debris.

“Yeah, it takes more than a couple of jerks like that to worry me.”

“I envy you your composure –” He half-turned in panic. “The third one – back on the road –”

Ed grabbed his wrist. “Let me go. You stay here and watch these two.” He jerked his head at their prisoners, who were hanging limply, still breathing but stunned by the impact with the wall. “They're not going anywhere.”

He waited just long enough for Michael to agree then launched himself through the window. He transmuted the pillar back into the ground and rode it down, jumping off and running to where he'd left hood-guy pinned.

“Crap.” The trap was smashed open, the third murderer long gone. There were a few scuffed footprints heading off up the street but they faded quickly. He ran on, checking every opening the guy could have used to get away. Nothing, nothing – damn, he should have made sure, never mind that someone was shooting at him at the time –

There was a shape in one of the yawning doorways, dark and man-shaped, the glint of golden hair –

The shock of a denotation thundered behind Ed. Whirling around, he saw the building he'd left Michael in start to crumple, the top floor broken apart in a rush of smoke and dust. Horrified, he started towards it, knowing it was already too late.

Then Michael burst from the eruption, a human rocket clearing the explosion just in time. He arced across the street, desperately trying to control his flight with just a single array, landing hard. The house finished its collapse with a roar.

Ed took one look at the doorway, saw the shape was no longer there, and sprinted over to Michael's prone form. To his immense relief, the other man groaned as he approach, pushing himself unsteadily up on to his side. “I'm s-sorry! The woman!” he gabbled as Ed reached him, “Her arm – a b-bomb – I couldn't stop her . . . s-sorry, sorry . . .”

“Stay still,” Ed ordered, not wanting to guess at whether Michael had broken any bones with his stunt. He could see people at the end of the street now, attracted by all the noise, policemen among them. “Help's coming.”

Better late than never, he thought as what was left of the house subsided nosily, but still too late.

 

* * *

 

“Well this is a mess,” Inspector McCrae said, regarding the collapsed building as if it were a personal affront.

“Those tend to happen when people attack Fullmetal.” This was, Mustang reflected, not even a particularly bad example of Elric-brand chaos.

The Inspector was not mollified. “Hilarious for all involved, I'm sure. My people tell me they've pulled out two bodies, both pretty mangled. Your boy's over there.”

An ambulance stood with its doors open in the middle of a swarm of police and soldiers. A bunch of medicos were busy looking over a tall mop-topped kid about Ed's age while Fullmetal himself paced about in front of them with all the patience of a caged tiger.

“What the hell happened here?”

Ed rolled his eyes when he heard Mustang's voice. “Michael and me got jumped by two alchemists and some crazy lady with guns for arms, we beat 'em good then she decided to blow herself up instead of going to prison, took one of the alchemists with her and the other one got away. Next dumb question.”

“Any idea who they were?”

“Never seen them before in my life. But I'm guessing they're the ones we've been looking for.”

“That does seem likely,” Mustang agreed. A cursory inspection suggested Fullmetal was perfectly intact, apart from a few new dents and scratches on his auto-mail. A pity the same could not be said for their suspects.

Hawkeye appeared at his shoulder. “The bodies have been laid out for inspection.”

“Let's go and take a look then. With me, Fullmetal.”

“Right.” Ed waved at the injured kid then followed Mustang towards the white tent the police had set up next to the wreckage.

“Who's your friend?” Mustang enquired as they walked.

“Michael? He's an Indie, the one I came up from Rush Valley with.”

“That's the flying alchemist?”

“Yeah.”

“And he's part of the LIA . . . interesting. That raises an obvious question, doesn't it?”

“Which one of your were they after?” Hawkeye supplied when Fullmetal looked blank.

“I figured they were after Michael,” he said, “but he wasn't ever a State Alchemist.”

“I assumed not.” A policeman held the tent flap open for Mustang. “So either we've got hold of the wrong pattern . . .”

“Or they were after me,” Ed finished thoughtfully.

The bodies were laid on trestle tables, as straightened out as it was possible for them to be. Inspector McCrae was already leaning over them with a police doctor at her side. “What's the verdict?” Mustang asked.

“That someone dropped a building on them.” The doctor poked at the bald man's shirt front. “Broke his neck. Not sure about her yet. Think I can probably make a educated guess though.”

Wires trailed from the woman's left shoulder, the auto-mail port blasted to pieces. Her right arm was still there but mangled, the metal caved in and twisted. Her face and the exposed skin on her neck was scorched and blackened. “Indeed.”

“Anyone you recognise?” McCrae asked.

Mustang stepped closer to the bald man, trying to make out what was left of the face behind the blood and the dirt. “I don't believe so.”

Ed came over and tugged up the man's sleeve, to the doctor's obvious irritation. “This is where he kept his arrays.”

Lines of ink looped around the battered flesh, sliced up but still legible. They formed a complex sequence of circles that in Mustang's estimation would have taken a great deal of skill to use in battle conditions. A triumph of cleverness over efficiency. Little wonder he'd been out-matched by Fullmetal.

McCrae sniffed. “Does that tell you anything?”

“Not who he is. Was he carrying anything that might identify him?”

“I wouldn't know,” muttered the doctor, “since I'm not being given the chance to do my job and find out.”

“Sir.” Hawkeye was still examining the other body. “There appear to be a tattoos on this woman's upper torso. They might serve as an identifying mark.”

The doctor huffed in exasperation. “Fine, how about I let you people just do my job for me.”

“Shut up Danby,” McCrae snapped, “Let me see that.”

She shouldered in beside Hawkeye, who gently stretched back the edge of the corpse's vest to expose a couple of triangles pointing across her collar bone. “Oh shit.”

“That's a good start,” Mustang commented wryly.

“Those are the marks of the Sabertooth Gang. They're scum. Usually work as muscle for hire. Most of them are some kind of ex-military.”

“Hmm.” He had heard the name and vaguely remembered the link to the Military. A street-gang was a little below his usual horizon of awareness though. “Odd career choice to go from that to a killing spree against alchemists.”

“Maybe we should go ask the rest of the gang what she was doing it for,” Ed suggested, not quite seriously.

“Well, their leader spends his evenings in _The_ _Rattle and Tap_ , so you're welcome to try.” The Inspector straightened. “I'd suggest taking a tank regiment with you though.”

“Genz Bresslau. Ex-Military Police. Bought himself out and decided to make a living off his physical prowess.” Fiat came smartly into the tent and stepped into the space between the tables, effectively blocking off Mustang's way out. “His gang is known to include a considerable number of troops who went AWOL after the fall of the Bradley regime.”

“Putting them squarely in your sights, Colonel.”

“Indeed Brigadier General, indeed. Hm. A mismatched pair, aren't they?” He scrutinised the bald man's body, to the doctor's obvious frustration. “These clothes are not those of someone who regularly drinks at _The Rattle and Tap_ , I'd wager.”

“Perhaps, gentlemen, we should leave Danby to finish his examination in peace.” McCrae's suggestion was firm.

Fiat did not move. He was staring fixedly at the tattooed arrays.

“See something interesting, Colonel?” If Fiat could not detect the challenge behind Fullmetal's mild question, Mustang certainly could.

“Possibly, Major Elric, possibly.” Stiffly, the head of Investigations stood aside to let Mustang out. “After you, sir.”

“So.” Once they were out on the street again, Mustang rounded on Fullmetal. “What about the one that got away?”

Ed prodded the road with the toe of his boot, hands firmly jammed in his pockets. “Didn't see much. They were wearing a hood. Tall, thin, I think.”

“Any detail you can recall will be helpful, Major,” Fiat said blandly.

“Really? I'd _never_ have guessed that.”

“Fullmetal . . .” Mustang said warningly. There was such a thing as pushing the disrespect for authority too far.

“I really didn't have time to look at him properly! I was too busy dealing with Baldy.” He gestured meaningfully at the tent. “Not even sure if it was a he . . . they might have had blond hair. Right at the end, I thought I saw them hiding in the shadows. But that was only for a second.”

“Tall, thin and blond doesn't really narrow down our field of possible culprits,” the Inspector said unnecessarily, “But it's better than nothing. I'll circulate the description.” She moved off to consult with one of her colleagues.

“If you'll excuse me.” Fiat bowed rather than saluting. “There's a lead I need to chase up at Headquarters.”

Curious about both the sudden burst of civility and the desire to leave, Mustang lifted his eyebrow. “Anything you care to share?”

“Forgive the liberty but not yet, sir. It might well turn out to be nothing and I'd hate to have wasted your time.”

Oh, that was good. A text-book example of crawling to a superior officer. “Carry on, Colonel.”

“So what do _we_ do?” Fullmetal was still pulling his 'I'm too smart for this discipline shit' act. “None of this answers _why_ these bastards were killing people.”

“The first thing we do is put your friend in protective custody in case he was the target. After that . . . perhaps this Bresslau person can fill in the gaps.”

“The Inspector might have been joking about the tank regiment,” Hawkeye said in her most serious tone of voice, “but soldiers are no more welcome in _The Rattle and Tap_ or that part of the city as a whole than policemen. Any official visit would drive Bresslau and his gang to ground immediately.”

“Then we don't go in as soldiers.” Ed's fist landed in his open palm. “Look, we don't need to arrest this guy or anything, just get an idea if that woman was here on his orders or not. Even if we don't find him, she could have hung around in the same place. There could be useful gossip to overhear or some other clue what this might all be about. This is the first lead we've had outside the League. We gotta follow it up.”

“I'm not disagreeing, Fullmetal. I'm just saying that if the Hero of the People walks into a bar like that, people aren't going to just spill their hearts out to him.” He could picture what they might do instead and it was _not_ pretty.

“I can disguise myself! And it's not like anyone ever expects the freaking 'Hero of the People' to be like me anyway!”

That was a good point. And as ridiculous a risk as it was, Fullmetal was right. If they could get in there as the news of the woman's death – whoever she turned out to be – filtered down through the strata of the underworld, they might just hear something to their advantage. But that did not mean Mustang wanted to test just how far Ed's supernatural luck in violent circumstances could be pushed.

“All right. I'll allow it. But you are not going in there alone.”

Hawkeye did not hesitate. “Permission to join the mission, sir?”

“Granted.”

“Wait –” Ed looked sidelong at her. “No offence, Captain . . . but are you sure you'd be able to blend in with a bunch of criminals?”

“You'd be surprised at the situations the Captain can blend into, Fullmetal.” Mustang allowed himself a knowing smirk. “And trust me: there's no-one better to have watching your back.”

“Thank you, sir.” She averted her eyes at the compliment. “I believe the earliest acceptable time to arrive at such an establishment is between six and seven in the evening. I suggest we prepare for the mission right away.”

“OK. Mind if I go and let Michael know we'll be looking after him, General?”

“Be my guest.”

“Thanks – oh.” There was an ominous clicking noise as Ed flexed his fingers and he scowled at his auto-mail wrist. “I, uh, better go and get Winry to check for any damage too.”

“Honestly, Fullmetal. You'd better still be paying your mechanic for the trouble you put her to.”

 

* * *

 

“Ed! What happened?!”

He cringed, almost backing away from her. “I'm sorry! I got jumped by a bunch of murderers! I don't think the damage is too bad though!”

Winry stared at him, at the dirt and dust covering his clothes, at the fresh dents in his forearm, at the graze on his cheek that, knowing Ed, he hadn't even _noticed_. Jumped by a bunch of murderers – good grief, and he was apologising for it! “Are _you_ OK?”

“I'm fine! Honestly, it wasn't even a tough fight! I don't think they were expecting to come up against someone like me – uh.”

She took a firm hold of his arm. “Come with me and let's get you checked over properly."

Luckily, the damage to both Ed and his auto-mail was pretty superficial. There was some grit caught in the hand mechanism and a couple of shallow cuts on his back but that was about the worst of it. He sat patiently while she sorted out his arm, working at the old desk Gracia had given them to use as a temporary workbench. It took a little coaxing to get him to tell her the details of what had happened. In truth he probably wasn't wrong to hold back. She'd woken up in a heavy sweat the night before, jolting out of a nightmare in which she'd been back in Barry the Chopper's abettor. That hadn't happened in years and it was almost certainly because of all the talk about murder.

But that was why she needed to know what was going on, so her brain didn't start filling in the details on its own.

“Is he all right?” she asked when Ed told her Michael had been with him. Somehow she couldn't picture someone so nice and reserved doing well in a fight.

“Yeah, he's OK. Shaken up, but he really had my back during it all.”

“Oh. That's good.” No, she still couldn't picture it. Then again, it was probably hard for someone who'd just met him to picture Al being so good at fighting.

Once she was done cleaning out the joints and realigning some slightly knocked-about connections, she sent Ed off to clean himself up and sat down on the bed with his uniform next to her. She could tell from the way the sleeves were crumpled that he'd had the jacket tied around his waist when he'd been attacked. That and the lack of slice-marks.

A hollowness flowered in the pit of her stomach. Ed talked so casually about fighting, about being in a situation where people had _died_. OK, this time it was the people who'd attacked him and they'd brought it on themselves but – what about next time? Or the time after that?

He'd died once. She knew that. He'd whispered it to her one night, a fearful admission even among so many others. One of the Homunculi had stabbed him through the chest. A lucky shot, he'd called it. Only that was the thing about fights, street-brawls, even wars. It only took one lucky shot. One day the cuts might not be shallow, the damage to the auto-mail might not be superficial and then –

The most selfish part of her knew she couldn't go through losing him again. Not now they were actually starting to build a life together. She wanted to protect him, which was all sorts of absurd given everything he was capable of and everything he'd already survived but next time, if it came, when it came, there wouldn't be a Philosopher's Stone around to magic him back to life . . .

Well, she'd just have to give him reasons to stay safe, wouldn't she? And make sure he had the best auto-mail in the world because that could never hurt.

“Hey, Winry . . . ?” He came back in, towelling his hair. It cascaded loose which she sort of wished he'd let happen more often because the way it fell over his shoulders really emphasised just what nice shoulders they were aaaaaaand she was staring, which was absolutely allowed especially when it drove away darker thoughts.

“Err, yes?”

“Um . . .” As adorable as he always looked when he was embarrassed, she got a sinking feeling as he hesitated. This was not going to be good, was it? “I've got to go out again. I need to chase up a lead . . .” He lowered the towel. “At a pub.”

Winry blinked. “OK . . .”

“Yeah. Um. And . . . I kinda figured . . . I'd need a disguise and . . .”

“What? Spit it out, Ed!”

It finally exploded out of him in one breath. “What can I wear to make me look like one of those auto-mail junkies from Rush Valley?!”

She blinked again. She thought about it. And quite unable to stop herself, she grinned.

 

* * *

 

It was nearly six by the time Al got out of the library. He stifled a yawn as he made his way through the mansion's twisting corridors and tried to ignore how hungry he was. It hadn't been his intention to stay so late. Had not, in fact, been his intention to stay past lunchtime. One book had bled into another, the paper-chain of references dragging him from one bookshelf to the next. He was going to have to apologise profusely to Noah for abandoning their lessons for the day and to Gracia for not showing up for lunch, and probably to several other people he'd let down by dint of falling straight into the research trap he'd built for himself.

 _You're not on the trail of the Stone any more_ , he told himself severely, _You can't just spend hours locked in a library chasing down a hunch._

Though apparently he could. He just _shouldn't_.

After a few more twists and passageways, it began to dawn on him that he'd gotten himself lost. A line of doors stretched opposite a row of windows. The view proved he was still on the first floor. The numbers on the doors (thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two . . .) meant nothing to him. Oh, wait, they must have been residential rooms. What was it Penny had said? At least fifty rooms she'd not known what to do with so converting them to bedrooms for hard-working alchemists seemed like an excellent use of the space.

The corridor was definitely not a landmark on the route back to the entrance. Where had he gone wrong? How far back? Well, whatever the case, he was going to have to retrace his steps unless . . . he pressed his face to one of the windows, trying to work out which side of the building he was on. Perhaps it would be quicker to keep going and find another staircase or –

“Mister h'Elric?” The reassuring shape of Parker the chauffeur appeared from the direction he'd just come. He had a nose like a snowplough, Al had thought that the first time they'd met. Big and angular and pointed. It somehow added to his air of dependability. “Not lost, h'are you, sir?” Though Al was never going to be able to deal with being 'sir' to anyone.

“Um, yes, I'm afraid! I think I took a wrong turn looking for reception.”

“H'y quite h'understand, sir. 'Appens all the time round 'ere. If h'y may make so bold, h'y h'would be 'appy to show you a short cut.”

“Is that OK? It wouldn't put you to too much trouble?”

“Not h'at all, sir! Please, walk this h'way.”

Parker took him along the corridor and then right down a narrow staircase Al would probably never have noticed was there if he'd been on his own. It took them into an equally narrow passageway that cut between rooms, he guessed, to come out into one of the mansion's many three-way intersections. There were, inevitably, vases of roses on small wooden tables in the corners. The passage emerged from the wall in a sharp turn that rendered it functionally invisible to the casual passer-by – at most, they'd think it was an alcove. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure their servants could pop up out of nowhere at a moment's notice.

“Along there, Mister h'Elric, sir. H'y 'ope you 'ave a good evening.”

“Thank you so much! And 'Al' is fine, really!”

“Good night, sir.”

Oh well. He'd tried. Al waved goodbye and set off the way Parker had indicated. He was sure he recognised where he was now. Yes, he'd passed those doors on the tour with Penny and –

“ _This is a disaster!”_

He stopped in his tracks. It was not the words themselves that got his attention so much as the tone in which they were said. Al, who'd spent a lot longer than he cared to remember with nothing but a voice to convey his emotions, had an appreciation for just how many different emotions and variations people could put into the way they said things. This was anger yes, but the kind that verged on fearful. And while he was sure there was some research that warranted that sort of response, he wouldn't have bet money that was the reason behind the exclamation.

“ _We cannot go on like this.”_

The second door on the left. It was just slightly ajar and that was where the voice was coming from. He was sure of it. Penny had shown them that room, he remembered. The music room. One of the few rooms, she'd told them, that was kept for 'ceremonial purposes'. Her words. Whatever the case, the implication was that it was not used very often.

Horribly aware he was eavesdropping, Al walked slowly past, ears prickling with the strain of trying to hear more. There was a very low buzz of conversation. Clearly he was only hearing the louder portions and he definitely should not have been doing that. Rather to his relief, he did not manage to overhear anything more.

He turned the corner and pretty much walked smack into Penny.

His reflexes saved them both an embarrassing tumble and he had his mouth open to apologise before he registered her expression. “Lady Penny? What's wrong?”

“Oh, Al – do forgive me.” Regaining some composure, she smoothed down one side of her hair. “I've just heard – have you heard from your brother this afternoon?”

“Uh, no. He was here earlier but – has something happened?” Al felt his voice go up an octave with concern.

“I'm afraid it has. Your brother and Mr Dorian were assaulted a little while ago. Don't worry, they're both fine, which is rather more than I can say for their assailants, two of whom ended up dead in the confrontation.”

“Dead?!” Surely, Ed wouldn't have – no, that was impossible –

“As I understand it, they fell on their swords. Figuratively speaking. However there was a third attacker who remains at large. Given that, I think it would be best if I got Parker to drive you home.”

“That's really not –”

“It's no trouble at all. Really, I insist. Besides, I need to organise cars for everyone else who wants to leave the mansion tonight and you will be one less person to worry about on that score – oh, Marcus, excellent. I take it you've heard?”

Dr Euler inclined his head in grim agreement. His clothes were more rumpled than Al had ever seen them before, as if he'd been caught in the middle of changing and had finished in a hurry. “George told me. I understand we're not out of the woods just yet.”

“I'm afraid not. Al, if you go along to the foyer, I'll send Parker along directly.”

“Ah, thank you,” he said since it was clear he was not going to be able to argue his way out of it.

As he left Penny and Euler to discuss this latest development, something struck him. Euler had appeared from behind him, from the back around the bend in the corridor. Could it have been the doctor in the music room?

The longer he thought about it, pacing the foyer waiting for Parker, the more Al was certain that it had been. For some reason, that worried him.

 

* * *

 

It was not the most cataclysmically ill-conceived plan Hawkeye had ever been involved in.

Compared to, say, the entirety of the Ishbal campaign or following strange creatures of phenomenal alchemic power through a door to another world, infiltrating a pub on the outside chance that a suspect in several brutal killings might take refuge there made sound tactical sense. She was a highly trained and – this was not bragging so much as a cast-iron faith in her own abilities – competent military officer.

It was just that the pub in question was _The Rattle and Tap_.

Central was not a city overburdened with rough night-spots but even if it had been, this one would have stood apart. Situated in one of the oldest, most dilapidated districts, it was a haven for those who considered charges of affray an occupational hazard. Over the years, it had weathered riots, brawls, numerous attempts to shut it down and at least seven separate fires. Always, it survived, perhaps through sheer determination on the part of the patrons that there remained _somewhere_ that was not a gleaming part of someone's stately plan for how things should be.

Under different circumstances, Hawkeye might have admired that. Not, however, while examining the place from the inside.

In absolute fairness, no one could have accused the place of being dingy. It was, in point of fact, surprisingly well lit. This threw every stain, patch of grime and hastily painted-over dent into sharp relief. _The Rattle and Tap_ wore its scars with pride. Such fittings as there were, were old and much abused. The tables, each and every one of them, were wonky and rocked at the slightest provocation. They formed a matched set with the chairs, benches and assorted stools.

The bar looked like it could hold off an army or two. It looked like it _had_. The rack of bottles behind it was modest in scope and terrifyingly vast in scale. The patrons knew what they wanted and they wanted a lot of it, and it would come in a slightly sticky, slightly grimy glass whatever it was. She doubted any of the regulars particularly cared about that last part, though it made her want to scrape her hand clean on her trousers after every other sip.

The man behind the bar looked like he could have personally fended off those armies with only the grey dish-rag he kept slung over his shoulder. He was built like a brick outhouse crossed with a heavy-weight boxing champion. That his muscle was just going to seed and sagging behind his apron did nothing to diminish the impression of brutal strength. This was not one of the Alex Louis Armstrongs of the world, who devoted themselves to perfecting their bodies; this was someone who won fights through sheer mass.

The same could be said for the fifty percent of the current customers who did not look like they won all their fights simply by disembowelling their opponents with their teeth.

From a covert study conducted in the half hour since she had arrived, Hawkeye had determined a number of other things about _The Rattle and Tap_ 's clientèle. First: they displayed a much higher density of auto-mail than was the average for Central together with a much greater willingness to show it off. The conservative strata of society that decreed lost limbs and their replacements were best left unseen would have come down with a fit of the vapours at such a sight, but the denizens of the pub did not so much as bat an eyelid. Save for the occasional bout of metal-limb one-up-man-ship, there was no sign that it was even considered a talking point.

Second: going by the copious tattoos, several different gangs co-existed within the pub. Most prominent were the Sabertooths, their upward-swept triangles displayed on necks and shoulders and in one case, across the entirety of the chest. They traded filthy looks with a collection of persons decorated with a small red flower of indeterminate type who mostly kept to themselves in a corner. Numerous smaller groups chatted at tables or lingered by the bar, their eyes darting about like the scouts in enemy territory they no doubt were. It seemed that as the dominant faction, the Sabertooths afforded a degree of tolerance towards the smaller gangs, albeit not much in the case of the flower-people.

Third: there was a considerable presence of ex-soldiers, especially among the Sabertooths. She could tell by the way they walked, the way they stood and all the other subtle hints of a life lived by the Military's rules that persisted no matter how drunk or unruly one became. That was the most useful observation. It meant she did not have to hide every little habit active service had drummed into her. All she needed to do was dull the edges a bit.

General Mustang tended to find her attempts at acting hilarious for all the wrong reasons. If anyone else in the brigade felt similarly, they kept their opinions safely to themselves. In truth, she was well aware that she was not the world's best advert for the human ability to deceive. There was a reason she preferred stoicism to lying. However, when all she was required to do was splash cheap liquor into her mouth, hunch over a table and generally exude the kind of blank depression that was just a bad night's sleep away for most people who had suffered through the 'Eastern Rebellion', acting did not come into it. The part was worryingly easy to fill.

She could tell she was succeeding in her chosen role by how little the patrons bothered her. There were a few early intruders on her privacy, a few lewd suggestions that she met with a blank, dull-eyed stare until the perpetrators backed down. It helped that her clothes were so thoroughly unflattering, dark cast-offs and a cap that had seen better days. Another conclusion about _The Rattle and Tap_ : if you looked like you were there to hide and drink yourself to an early grave, it would respect that. People who matched the description she was faking were scattered in every corner and nook that could accommodate them. How many of those huddled figures had been broken by the terrible things the State had forced them to do? Could that have been her fate, or the General's? Most definitely. They had found strength in others. They were lucky. The exceptions, even.

Hawkeye swigged a mouthful of her drink to shock herself into concentrating on the here and now. She was waiting for Ed. They had agreed beforehand that he would make his appearance at least half an hour after she took up her station so as to avoid any hint of a connection. Her position was as a passive observer and back-up. He would be the one actively trying to find out what their mystery woman's connection to the Sabertooths might tell them about the killings.

Thirty-eight minutes into the vigil and she was starting to wonder how long he was going to leave it. Once, she thought she saw him on the far side of the room, where a patch of shadow contrived to exist in spite of the over-bright lights. Just a glimpse of golden hair, though, and nothing since so she must have been mistaken.

At minute thirty-nine, he finally arrived.

He was almost unrecognisable. His hair, dyed black, hung in a loose mane that did a good job of blurring the shape of his face. From somewhere, possibly Winry's wardrobe, he had found a dark brown jacket that, unbuttoned and with the sleeves cut off, showed off his auto-mail right arm almost in its entirety. Foregoing any kind of shirt or vest helped in that regard and displayed most of his chest. Disconcertingly, Ed had also had the presence of mind to dye the downy fuzz that grew in patches between the scar tissue. And after that –

On a thirteen-year-old, leather trousers were a slightly endearing case of trying to look a certain kind of grown up. On a twenty-one-year-old, they verged on the indecent. In complete defiance of how he normally presented himself, Ed walked into the room in a way that suggested he was both keenly aware of that effect and supremely comfortable with it. It was not quite a swagger but it was definitely getting there.

If she had not known who he was, Hawkeye would have put him down as another of the young auto-mail users peppering the crowd, the type who imported the Rush Valley attitude of treating prosthetics as a fashion statement, albeit one who had forgone tattoos in favour of liberally covering his metal limbs in spikes. What manner of persuasion it took for Winry to agree to _that_ , she could only speculate.

Ed looked over at Hawkeye once, just long enough to fix her position. Then he was strutting up to the bar, oozing self-assurance and ordering a drink as if he did it every day. She watched the attention he drew and covertly checked her pistol was ready at hand beneath her coat.

No. Not the _worst_ plan she had been involved in. But certainly not the best, either.

 

* * *

 

So, criminals were boring. This seemed to be a universal truth. Possible bi-universal.

They also didn't – as certain cheap railway station novels that he had never read, at all, not even while really bored on the way night train from the middle of nowhere – loudly discuss their evil plans over a pint of ale in a crowded room. There was a lot of swearing, bad jokes, muttered conversations about who'd recently been done by the police, shanked by a rival gang or gotten lucky in bed, and absolutely no handy comments along the lines of 'hey youse guys, you'll never guess who's going round icing alchemists this week.'

Since he'd arrived, Ed had done a couple of circuits of the pub, trying to make small-talk with some of the least antagonistic-looking groups. He'd given the impression he was from a different part of the city and was looking to get set up in the Corn Market, if they knew what he meant. For his trouble, he got a couple of what passed for come-ons in this kind of place and several more invitations to piss the hell off.

He finally made some progress with a clutch of guys gathered around an auto-mail arm-wrestling competition. It felt pretty inane to stand there watching the man and woman pit their mechanical muscles against each other and show off his own arm to the over-muscled, slightly drunk kid standing next to him. But if that's what it took . . .

With a triumphant crash, the woman slammed her opponent's arm against the table. The onlookers cheered. Ed joined in because it seemed like what would be expected. A lot of getting along with people, he'd found, involved acting like they expected you to. “You gonna try taking her on?” his new friend asked with a leer and a nudge in the ribs.

Naturally – _because that was just his kind of luck_ – that got the attention of everyone else and they all else started making the same suggestion. A couple of sharp shoves knocked him forwards.

Trying to object wouldn't have helped, especially once the woman saw him and joined in the encouragement. And he was a street-punk with more auto-mail than sense, wasn't he? Accepting the challenge was just staying in character.

“You got a name, kid?” The woman was maybe ten years older than him, with hard lines on her face and hair cut so short it didn't really have colour any more. Her auto-mail was on the right, like his and not much more bulky. She'd got the Sabertooth tattoo on her left shoulder. “I like to know who I'm gonna beat.”

“Rus Tringham,” he drawled, making a show out of taking the seat just vacated by her latest victim, “What about you?”

The crowd laughed, like it was a great joke he didn't know. “Call me Su.” She flexed her arm, the armour plates clinking. “Like what you see?”

“I've seen better.” Stretching out his own arm, he took pleasure in how much more smoothly it moved.

“That right?” Her elbow hit the table, her hand open. “Let's see what you got.”

There wasn't any ready-set-go. The moment they clasped hands, she started applying pressure. He matched her easily at first, though it was obvious she was just trying to get his measure. Gradually, it started to take more and more effort to keep his forearm vertical. Su bared her teeth. He bared his teeth right back. “What, you thought I'd just bend over?”

“You look like you'd bend over for anyone.” Her grip tightened, fingers grinding on fingers.

Right. Those kind of jokes. He'd walked into it but still. “Not for anything this weak.”

The pressure on his arm doubled, tripled. Rockbell-built motors strained to fight back, whirring audibly. He'd have been worried by that except Su's motors were doing the exact same thing. After another minute of that and there was no more banter. They were too busy throwing all their strength against one another.

Ed could really have done without the jeers and 'encouragement' of the onlookers. Damnit, he was concentrating here! Su lost a couple of centimetres then fought them back, tipping the competition the other way.

“Ready to give in yet . . . kid?”

“Hah! Give it all you got . . . granma! I can take it.”

“Little shit. I'll give you 'granma'!”

“Seriously . . . what is this? This is nothing . . . not like this other dame I know!” 'Dame'? Where the hell had that come from? No one said that!

“What dame?” Su demanded, jaw grinding.

“Real firebrand! You know . . . hot stuff. Red head . . . twice your steel! Really something!”

Her face twisted and with a monumental effort, she forced his arm to a thirty degree angle. But that used up the last of her shoulder-strength and, oh, he was going to kiss Winry when he got back! Her beautiful, beautiful engineering went into action and smoothly, inexorably, forced Su to give ground.

At thirty degrees the other way, he stopped. “Guess this makes it a draw, huh?”

“Don't humour me! You're able to finish it, finish it!”

“You quitting? That red head, didn't seem like she'd quit for anything. Thought it went with the tattoos. Or are you just faking them?”

Su snarled. “Fuck you!”

All right, enough was enough. He'd seen her reaction to what he'd said, knew he was on to something. No need to drag it out. He pushed on to the point where she'd lose all leverage, making sure he looked like he was enjoying it –

Someone took a tight grip on his shoulder – the flesh-and-blood one, so it _hurt_ – and heaved him bodily out of his seat, forcing him to let go of Su's hand to stop her being dragged along with him. Whoever it was spun him around and Ed recoiled from a hot waft of cigar-breath.

Mustang had shown him a photograph of Genz Bresslau while they'd been planning this stupid idea. The picture hadn't done the mohawk justice. In real life, it was a full-on electrified rodent squatting malevolently above his piggy forehead. Beyond that, he looked exactly the same, except for the Sabertooh fangs inked from the sides of his chin up to just below his eyes.

“Genz!” Su protested, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Shut up.” Bresslau's voice was thick with smoke and drink. “Now _kid_.” His monster of a left hand fell on Ed's other shoulder, more like an armoured bear's claw than an honest attempt to replicate a human appendage. “ _What_ were you shitting about a red-head with Sabertooth tats and two lots of steel?”

Ed stood his ground, refusing to squirm. “What's it to you?”

“What's it to me?” Something not quite entirely unlike a laugh forced its way out from Bresslau's throat. “ _What's it to me_? You got any idea who I am, kid?”

“I don't know, you the bouncer or something?”

The claw tightened. “I'm Genz Bresslau! I'm the fucking Armour-Piercing Alchemist! And I'm the mean son-of-a-bitch who's gonna pop your head like a fucking _blister_ if you don't tell me just what the _hell_ it is you know about Greta!”

Jackpot. Though, wait – Armour-Piercing . . . no, one thing at a time.

“Hey, is that her name? Huh. She never mentioned that. Guess we didn't really have time to make small talk . . .”

Bresslau pushed his face closer, bringing his stinking breath with him. “You some kind of Bradleyist too? S'that it? You want to bring down the fucking government?”

“Dunno what you're talking about – s'that what Greta was into, huh? Cool.” If the idiot kept this up, they'd have the whole case cracked in no time flat.

“Urrrrgh! Don't get smart with me, boy! No one walks out on the Sabertooths, you get that?! _Especially_ not to crawl back to the fucking Military assholes who cut us loose in the first place!” Grabbing hold of the front of Ed's jacket, Bresslau hauled him up on to tip-toes. “So talk! Where is she?!”

A chair scraped behind Ed. “For fuck's sake, Genz, shut up!” Su shouted, “Can't you see the brat's playing you?”

Damnit. Why'd she have to chose that minute to prove she had all the brain-cells Bresslau was missing? Oh well, it was good while it lasted. “Ah, geez, guys. You got me.”

Furiously, Bresslau drew back his bear-claw, arrays sparking on his knuckles. “Oh, you are _de –_ ”

Ed kicked him hard between the legs with his auto-mail shin.


	8. Tourbillon

“What were you thinking?!” Al shouted, taking full advantage of having enough room to gesticulate angrily. He needed to do something to keep from thumping his brother and thereby upsetting the repairs. “What were you _thinking_?!”

An ice-pack pressed to a truly impressive black eye, Ed opened and closed his hand so Winry could watch the exposed mechanism move. “Hey, it wasn't anything I couldn't handle! Those chumps couldn't fight for shit!”

“That's not the point! Someone tries to kill you and you decide to go start a bar fight in the worst pub in the city!”

“I didn't go there _just_ to do that –”

“You went _on your own_ to try and get information out of a street gang!”

“Hawkeye had my back!”

“One person! You went in there with one other person! You didn't have –” You didn't have me, he managed not to say aloud. _I wasn't there_. “You could have been killed, brother.”

“Well I wasn't! Look, Al – ow!”

“Sit still while I get this back together,” Winry ordered, giving him another rap on the knee with her screwdriver, “And Al, calm down, will you? Ed's fine! He didn't even bust his auto-mail too badly this time.”

“He's got bruises everywhere and someone nearly smashed his face in! That is not fine! And why aren't you backing me up on this? Why did you let him go in the first place?!”

“Because it's his job, Al! You know that!” She glared at him. “What's gotten into you? You guys have both been involved in worse than this.”

“That doesn't mean I have to be happy about it!”

“Can't say I'm exactly thrilled with the results myself.” General Mustang strolled into the temporary infirmary, eyebrow already at a sardonic angle. He was holding a piece of paper that looked awfully like a bill for damages. “Did you have to take out that wall, Fullmetal?”

“That wasn't me! It's your damn fault for not telling me that idiot Bresslau is an alchemist!”

Mustang shrugged and spread his hands. “Even I can't know everything. Though Al is right. You should have been more careful. Starting a fight was reckless.”

“It's not like I wanted to!”

“And don't think I'm not angry with you too, General.” Al rounded on him. “You're the one who sent Ed in there in the first place!”

It was deeply satisfying to see the Flame Alchemist recoil slightly from the heat in his words. Good! Al was not going to stand for any more of this. Why couldn't they all get it through their thick skulls that they needed to take this _seriously_?

“I'm sorry if I should have asked your permission first.” The retort was said lightly but in a way that suggested Mustang did not appreciate being yelled at.

Al did not care and was going to carry right on yelling when Ed interrupted. “What did Fiat think about the possible Bradleyist connection?”

“He agreed it was extremely interesting. I think he already knew. Or suspected.”

Ed groaned. “Can't you just order that guy to tell you everything he knows already?”

“For I hope obvious reasons, Court Martial Investigations is outside the control of officers in my position. They answer ultimately to General Grumman alone. I out-rank Fiat, but I'm not his superior.”

“Yeah, yeah . . . you could have just said 'no'.”

“So what are you going to do now?” Winry asked, finishing getting Ed's arm back together and reaching for a dropper of oil.

“That is the question.” Mustang scowled at the bill in his hand and started folding into ever-smaller squares. “The police are interviewing all those who were still groaning on the floor when they finally got to _The Rattle and Tap_. Someone might say something. Beyond that . . . we have the implication that we're dealing with those who want to see a return to Bradley's way of doing things.”

“Weird they'd be targeting people who were State Alchemists then . . .”

“'Were' might well be the operative word there. Anyway.” He pushed the minute wad of paper that he'd created into his pocket and took out his watch to check the time. “Come to my office when Miss Rockbell's done with you, Fullmetal. Miss Rockbell. Al.” With a backhanded wave, The General departed at the same languid pace he'd entered.

“Is there much more for you to do?” Ed asked Winry, fidgeting about on his chair. “I mean, my arm's back together and my leg's fine –”

“And Al is still mad at all of us. Aren't you, Al?”

Glaring at them both, Al crossed his arms.

Ed pressed a hand over his face. “OK . . . I thought you were gonna kick Mustang on his ass too . . .”

“He sent you into that place dressed in those!” Al stabbed an accusing figure at the heap of black leather sitting on the camp-bed in the corner.

“Uh, actually . . .” Winry blushed and fumbled the dropper back into her tool-box.

“Oh, come on!” He wanted, very badly, to stamp his foot and only just stopped himself from doing so. But honestly! “What is wrong with all of you that you thought this was a good idea?!”

That shut them up for a minute. But only a minute. “Al . . .” Ed sighed, “I kinda hate saying this but compared to some of the things we've done . . . this wasn't that dangerous.”

“It was still stupid!”

“I'm not arguing about that. But . . . it feels like you're overreacting. A bit?”

Al took a deep breath. “Yesterday afternoon, someone tried to murder you. If Michael hadn't have been with you, you might have been killed. And then, instead of actually recovering from that, you decided to go and start _another_ fight. Without. Calling. Me. First.”

“Wha – Al – come on! I don't want to drag you into this shit –”

“And I don't want _my brother_ to _die_ because I wasn't there to help! We're not travelling together any more but that doesn't mean I'm not going to sit around on my ass when you need me!”

While Ed tried to form a response, Winry shut the tool-box with a defiant snap. She put her fists on her hips. “You know you can't always be there for him, Al. You get that. I know you do, because you're smarter than he is about some things.”

“That doesn't mean I shouldn't be there for him when I can be!” he threw back at her, still glaring Ed, “Or that he should start keeping me out of things, or not tell me when he's about to p _ut himself in danger_! I had to find out from _Lady Handley-Paige –_ ”

“OK! I get it!” Ed shouted, rocketing from the chair, “I should have told you! Then you could have come along too and looked completely out of place and started the fight an hour earlier and then we wouldn't have any leads at all!”

He regretted it the moment the words were out, Al could tell. But he didn't care. Not giving Ed any time to take it back, seething about ready to kick a hole in the floor, he stalked to the door. “I'll be at the League with Noah for the rest of the day,” he announced icily, “Just in case you need me for anything.”

“Al!”

Ed's cry followed him from the room. He didn't look back.

 

* * *

 

Walking through the mansion's gardens, Noah marvelled a little at being welcome somewhere so grand. Really welcome, not just tolerated or ogled as a curiosity. She wondered how she would have been treated if she were not Alphonse Elric's student. Even in a world of miracles, there was poverty and prejudice. There were still outsiders. Without alchemy, without the brothers' support and friendship, she would have most likely been dismissed as an itinerant. So far, she had not heard anyone in Amestris use the word 'gypsy' but there were many words used with just the same sneering contempt.

Yet instead, here she was. Given free run of the place. Treated as someone with value and worth. Treated as _someone_.

It was good, even if an awareness of how much it hinged on a fluke of equivalence nagged at the back of her mind. She had come to this world to escape a life being defined by what she could do and where she came from, after all . . .

“Good morning, miss.” Parker did not exactly appear out of nowhere but it was still something of a shock when he spoke to her. Quite incongruously, he was standing on the lawn in full butler's regalia, a silver salver in one hand . . . with a pair of gardening sheers and a spray-bottle of some dark liquid balanced on top. Noah did not know what to make of the sight until she looked past him and saw Lady Handley-Paige kneeling on the grass, hair bound up beneath a pink head-scarf, vigorously weeding a bed of white roses.

“Oh hello dear!” she said when she noticed Noah watching her, “Do forgive me not getting up, won't you? I've been most terribly slack about keeping the garden in good repair lately and I simply must make up the difference.”

Noah smiled and, shifting her skirts, settled down on the lawn beside her. “Do you do a lot of gardening?”

“As much as I can! I suppose that surprises people. They expect me to have a whole army of gardeners at my beck and call, but I have always tried to do as much of it as possible.”

“The gardens are very beautiful here.”

“Thank you! I am extremely proud of them.” A shadow passed over Penny's face and she closed her eyes for a moment, hands falling still. “It was my father who encouraged me to work on them, you know. As a hobby more than anything but he appreciated beauty, you see, and the act of creating beauty. My love of roses played into that. Creating beauty from base matter. Just like alchemy.”

A little confused by the sadness in Penny's voice and a little intrigued as well, Noah could not resist trying to prompt more of an explanation. “He was an alchemist as well?”

“Oh yes. Practical science runs in my family. My paternal grandfather was a watchmaker. He designed the first State Alchemist pocket-watches, the part of them that was a watch. He got the royal commission for it. He was a wonderful man. I always thought my father was wonderful too. He was an engineer on a much grander scale. He took the skills my grandfather taught him, added in a dash of alchemy and applied them far and wide. He built things. It made him rich. Everything you see here is thanks to that wealth.” She dragged a particularly stubborn weed from the ground with a sharp tug. “There are people who say wealth is a curse, which is not an attitude I hold with, but I will say that it does change people's opinions of one somewhat. I am sure there are those who think everything I do with the League is just the action of a silly little socialite with more money than sense, indulging some daft notion of starting a legacy. Very aggravating. Although I do suppose they are right in a way. It is at least about changing a legacy.”

“Changing . . . your father's legacy?” Noah guessed.

“My father made _many_ things. Tools. Sewing machines. And guns. So many guns. He was famous for it. One could always trust a Handley-Paige gun to be precision made and remarkably good value.” So much bitterness welled up in that glib statement that Noah wanted desperately to reach out a hand to her. Uncertain of how that would be received, she did not but the instinct was strong.

Penny put aside the last few weeds. “The spray please, Parker. Thank you.” She began to apply a thin mist of the dark liquid to the biggest rose in the bed, spraying leaves that looked as if they were in danger of being colonised by insects. “Were you caught up in the misery of the Ishbal War? No? You were very lucky. So was I. So was my father. We were safe here in this palace his money had built for us. And while we were safe, the guns that had earned him that money were flowing east like some ungodly tide. I don't know how many deaths can be laid at our door but I fear it would be a large majority of those killed by conventional means. Do you see? All this, all this beauty, built on gunmetal and this country's thirst for war.”

“You don't think that is . . .” Even as she was compelled to say something, Noah was not sure what it should be. “You cannot hold yourself responsible for that, surely.”

“No, not at all. But I consider it my responsibility to repair the destruction my father wrought. So for whatever I can afford to invest in the Ishbalan reconstruction effort, I do. And while my agents scour the country looking for alchemy books, they also search out sacred texts and other looted items that must be returned to where they belong. I am determined to turn _my_ abilities to something constructive. Reparations are one of those things. The League is another.” Penny lowered the spray bottle. “And though my father's companies still make sewing machines, they have not made a single gun since I have had any say in the matter. He trusted me enough to will a controlling interest to me.” She tapped her chin. “I wonder what he would think of what I did with it.”

Handing the bottle back to Parker, Penny shifted on her knees so she could face Noah head on. She folded her hands in her lap solemnly. “I did not quite mean to turn the topic in such a maudlin direction. I'm truly sorry if I am making you uncomfortable.”

Noah assured her that she was not. “Is . . . something wrong? I just . . . you seemed as if you were saying that for you as well as me.”

“True enough. One might say _my_ legacy is weighing on my mind somewhat this morning. I set out to make the world a better place, to make up for my father leaving it a worse one. Today I find myself in the position of questioning whether I have in fact failed completely.”

“How can you say that? Surely the League –”

“Yes . . . the League.” She sighed dejectedly. “My great hope for the future. They needed help and investment, a base of operations, credibility, all things I could provide. All things they needed to become better than the State Alchemists, better than the whole rotten edifice that butchered this country and its neighbours. And now . . .”

Penny glanced at Parker, then across the lawn beside them. As far as Noah could see without too obviously turning her head, the three of them were quite alone. “Now I fear that I am faced with a choice between doing the right thing and thus letting it all fall apart,” Penny said with a cool detachment that was not quite convincing, “or allowing something quite monstrous to go unchallenged.”

 

* * *

 

Michael was doing up his waistcoat when Ed came into the poky room they'd stuck him in, fingers flashing from button to button like it was a race. “Good morning!” he said cheerily, sounding and looking happy to see Ed.

“Hi. You OK in here?”

“Shouldn't I be asking you that? That's a pretty shiner I don't remember you getting in the fight.”

“Huh? Oh.” Ed a hand up to his black eye. “Yeah, got into some trouble following up a lead, that's all. I thought I ought to come see how you were holding up.”

“Surprisingly well considering . . . everything.” With his waistcoat firmly secured, he stretched out his arms to encompass 'everything'. “To be perfectly honest with you, I'm amazed you didn't find me crying in a corner somewhere.” He let his arms drop to his sides. “The worst of it is, you told me to watch them and all I managed to do was watch them blow up –”

“That's not your fault,” Ed told him firmly, “I'm just sorry I left you there on your own. If we'd both gone after the third one, maybe they'd have just tried to escape instead of killing themselves.”

“I don't even know if that's what they were trying to do – m-maybe she really was just trying to escape and me being there threw her off or –”

“Hey, stop that. You start second guessing all this, you'll go mad. Trust me on that.”

“. . . all right. All right.” Michael made a discarding gesture. “I'll take your good advice and try not to have a breakdown. I don't suppose you know how long I'm going to be kept here?”

Apologetically, Ed said he didn't know. “Until we catch the third killer, so . . . however long that takes.”

“I don't suppose . . . is there anything I could do to speed up the process?”

“Probably not. Unless you've suddenly remembered some grudge these guys could have against you . . .”

“Nothing's sprung to mind since the police asked the same thing. Sorry.”

“Eh. If they were Bradley die-hards, they were probably after me anyway.”

“Oh,” Michael said, looking surprised, “You think they're Bradleyists?”

“Yeah – oh, no one will have told you. Right.” Ed slapped his forehead. “Sorry. That's the lead we chased down last night. Looks like the woman at least was involved with that kind of shit.”

“That would make sense, wouldn't it? People like that wanting to . . .”

“Kill me? Probably. But we don't know for sure.”

“And in the meantime I'm stuck in here to be on the safe side?”

Ed shrugged apologetically. “Yeah. Look, is there anything I can get you? Books or something – do you have research notes at the League?”

Reaching over to where his coat was lying on a chair in the corner, Michael took out a notebook. “Not really. I've got most of what I'm working on here. To tell you the truth, I've not found much in the League's library that'll help so far.” With a sigh, he pushed a hand over his hair, flatting it down. “Have you ever been _sure_ if you could just get your hands on one particular book, it will have the solution to all your problems – and then when you do finally get hold of it, it's at best only a tiny step forward?”

“You have no idea.”

“It is really very annoying, isn't it? I had a lot of hope for this particular work from one of the old western academies that I heard the League had gotten hold of and . . . well, let's just say I feel like I am back at square one again.”

“I know that feeling.” Rocking back on his heels, Ed folded his arms and tried to look reassuringly knowledgeable. “You just have to roll the dice again. Or some stupid metaphor like that . . . you just have to keep going until you get somewhere.”

“That easy, hmm?”

“Aw, fuck no. It's never easy. But giving up would be worse.”

“That's . . . certainly one way of looking at it,” Michael agreed after a noticeable pause. He opened the notebook and flicked through aimlessly. Ed caught glimpses of circles and equations but nothing he could actually make out properly from across the room. Whatever it was that Michael was working on, he chose not to share the details and, closing the book, he scrubbed at his hair again. “May I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Your alchemy . . . would you . . . I don't suppose you might consider teaching me about your methods? Or pointing me towards someone who could? I know you're a State Alchemist so you couldn't take on an apprentice but I wondered if you could perhaps . . .”

Ed did not know exactly what he looked like to cause Michael to trail off so abruptly but he could imagine. “No.”

“Just . . . no?”

“If this is about wanting to know how to do it without a circle, yeah.”

“Well –”

“It isn't about you.” He knew he needed to stress that. He didn't want Michael thinking it was anything that could change with a bit more experience or motivation. “I'd say the same to anybody else.”

“But the power and precision you showed yesterday –”

“No. I wouldn't teach you even if I could. I've got reasons for that. And whatever _your_ reasons for wanting to know, the cost isn't worth it.”

“But –”

“I'll come back later,” Ed said with as much finality as he could manage while he tried not to clench his auto-mail hard enough to grind the gears, “See if you need anything. OK?”

“OK,” Michael echoed flatly, his shoulders slumped dejectedly.

“I'm sorry,” he called as Ed left, “I did not mean to offend you.”

Ed figured he was telling the truth. Only he did not trust himself to say anything civil back so he just kept walking.

 

* * *

 

“Your thoughts, Ross?”

If there was one thing Ross had come to dread while working under Colonel Fiat's command, it was those three words. They carried with them an edge of challenge, a demand to justify her presence and credentials as an investigator. She always got the nasty impression that her future career was balancing on her answer.

“Well sir . . .” Ross carefully laid the two photographs she had been comparing down in front of her and stared straight ahead. “The tattoos are definitely the same pattern but that does not necessarily count as a point of identification. We only have the array itself in the archives. It could be someone else who chose to use the same circles. But the scars are exactly as they're described and I would say that even accounting for the injuries and hair loss, there's enough of a similarity in the face and build to make it plausible it's the same man.”

“Do you think it is?”

Time to fix her the colours to the flagpole. “Yes sir, I do.”

A heart-hammering pause passed during which she continued to stare ahead. Anything but look at the Colonel.

“So do I. Excellent.” Fiat clapped his hands and rubbed them enthusiastically. “All beginning to fit together.”

“It is?” Bloch asked with the kind of wide-eyed incomprehension that always made Ross wonder why on earth he had insisted on taking the transfer to an investigative post as well. “I mean,” he added, reflexively going to attention, “Yes sir!”

“Simmer down, Warrant Officer.” Fiat scooped the photographs and papers off the desk and shuffled them together. “To summarise for your benefit, the male culprit killed in yesterday's fracas was most likely Linus Lohner, former SA wanted for charges of immoral conduct and a charge of desertion. Prior to death. he was going by 'Thom Lindau', member of the LIA in general and the Mining and Mineralogy Study Group in particular. The self-same cadre to which most of the victims belonged. A suggestive coincidence. Further, we have been able to confirm that the second culprit is Greta Orenco, disgraced service-woman suspected of having strong Bradleyist leanings. An intriguing partnership.”

“So . . . Lindau, Lohner, whatever he called himself was like the three victims, right? Ex-State who joined the League?”

“Yes, Bloch. Clearly.”

“But . . .” Poor Denny looked thoroughly confused. “If they're all ex-State Alchemists and they're all part of this same study group thing, why would one of them be killing off the others?”

Fiat reached over and clamped a hand on to Bloch's shoulder. “Young man. There are days when you make me feel very old and very cynical. Leaving that aside, valid question and one I suspect I know the answer to –”

“Colonel Fiat, sir?” Sheska interrupted tremulously, hovering on the threshold with the outer office as if tiptoeing in a minefield, “I'm so sorry sir but there's a really urgent call – it's Inspector McCrae, sir. She's saying that Lady Handley-Paige of the League, uh, just walked into the police station with some really important information. Sir.” She stuttered to a stop and visibly braced herself. Ross winced in sympathy.

Colonel Fiat showed his teeth. “That, Private, may be the best news I've heard all week.”

 

* * *

 

“Hi George! Um, do you know where one of the senior members might be at the moment – oh! Never mind!” Al hurried on past the bewhiskered receptionist and on up one of the staircases to catch Dr Euler as came down from the first floor.

“Mr Elric.” Euler greeted him with a faint attempt at a smile. There seemed to be fresh lines on his thin face and his cheeks looked even more hollow than usual.

“Sorry to bother you,” Al began, hoping that it wasn't too rude to intercept him when he was clearly on the way somewhere, “Do you have a moment?”

“I always try to have several moments at least for prospective members. How can I help?”

“It was just . . . I was asking in the library about some of the translations of Xingian books on medicine that you have only I was told that I needed permission of the senior members to get access to them. I was wondering why that was and whether – I'm not asking for some sort of exception, I haven't joined yet after all – but I just wondered if you could tell me what's in them?”

“The Xingian texts . . . ?” Euler pursed his lips and nodded twice. “My word, Mr Elric, the speed of your research astounds me. I wouldn't have thought your survey of the literature would have gotten nearly so far so fast.”

“I've had a lot of practice at researching things quickly.” And obsessively, Al's inner voice supplied sardonically. “Really, I've mostly been following the history of how medical alchemy has developed.”

“And that would naturally, eventually, lead you to the far east, of course. Well now. It's true we do operate a fairly strict policy on those works. The Xingian approach to medicine and indeed alchemy was somewhat less . . . strict than our own traditions. To put it bluntly, they did not have the same taboos as we do. There are elements of . . . human transmutation and other unpleasant subjects dealt with extremely casually in their writings. Given that we felt it would be prudent to institute some limits on people seeing them. You need the signatures of two senior members – or would do, if you were a full member of the League . . .”

“So you can't let me see them if I'm not?”

“We have to give you some motivation to join! In all seriousness, though, we are very cautious about who gets to have access to those writings. We wouldn't want to set a precedent for allowing non-members to . . . ah . . .”

Euler was no longer looking at Al. He was staring past him, back downstairs towards the foyer, towards the doors – towards, Al saw, a group of policemen and soldiers who were marching into the foyer in an intimidating mass of blue and grey. He picked out Lieutenant Ross walking beside a man with a short black beard and a colonel's uniform, and a grey-haired woman in a pale trench-coat.

“That is . . . quite the deputation.” The observation sounded strained. Euler straightened his tie and called down, “Inspector. This is unexpectedly . . . on mass. Can we help you? I'm afraid Lady Handley-Paige is n –” His voice faltered perhaps because he, like Al, had just caught sight of Penny herself at the back of the group of policemen, Parker at her side, both equally as grim.

Deliberately not hurrying, the policewoman mounted the stairs. Al and Dr Euler were perhaps a quarter of the way up, just where the staircase began to curve. She climbed until she was a couple of steps below them. The colonel and Lieutenant Ross and a couple of the soldiers followed her. Ross had a hand on her gun. “Dr Martin Euler,” the policewoman began, loudly enough for her voice to carry through the entire foyer, “I am placing you under arrest on suspicion of murder –”

Euler's hand smashed down against the banister, one of his rings flaring into life. A great plume of stone daggers erupted at his touch, spraying towards the inspector, Ross and the rest. Al made a grab for Euler, going on instinct while his brain reeled. With an astonishing turn of speed, the man evaded him and hurtled upstairs. Caught between the urge to give chase and the need to make sure everyone else was all right, Al hesitated long enough for Euler to get clean around the bend and almost to the top.

At which point, the stairs reared up and became liquid beneath him. He cried out as he was pitched over on to his back, landing hard and juddering down nearly a full metre before the wave of transforming building crashed over him. His arms flailed, still free. At a flat-out charge, Al was just in time to grab the hand with the ring before it could connect with anything. He wrenched the miniature transmutation circle off and flung it away, not really caring where it landed. Euler gave a grunt of pain and irritation, then squeezed his eyes tight shut in surrender and lay still.

At the top of the stairs, Noah took her hands from the floor and got unsteadily to her feet. She was flushed and breathing hard. “Penny asked me to keep an eye on him,” she said in answer to Al's unspoken question, brushing at her sleeve with something close to embarrassment, “Just in case . . .”

Al nodded dumbly. He was going to be demanding more than one explanation later but right that minute, he was still too abuzz with adrenaline to work out how to ask.

“As I was saying.” The police inspector came up beside Al. Blood dripped from a cut across her forehead and from another on her cheek. She examined the man trapped at her feet as if he were something nasty smeared on a pavement. “Martin Euler. You are under arrest.”

 

* * *

 

Mustang was so angry that he kept pressing his thumb and forefinger together in anticipation of clicking. It took him a concerted effort not to be visibly furious. The only consolation was that he was not the only one.

“What the fuck is going on?” Ed demanded, _very_ visibly furious, “Why the hell have they arrested Euler?”

“I will tell you just as soon as someone bothers to tell _me_.”

They were marching towards the prison block, a dingy little building tucked away towards the rear of Central Headquarters that was rarely used for anything as serious as holding prisoners. There were better places for that, safely away from the grounds frequented by the top brass, and really Fiat could have chosen to take Euler to any of them. Bringing him to HQ was just pure show-boating, a way of parading his accomplishment in front of everyone. The obviousness of it made Mustang want to spit fire in a way that was probably broadly hypocritical. He was too pissed off to care.

“Why's the guy not in a police station, anyway? I thought you said it was McCrae who arrested him, not Fiat?”

“Colonel Fiat insisted that Euler be taken into military custody on the grounds that his alleged victims have all been former military personnel,” Hawkeye supplied, keeping up easily with their break-neck pace, “The inspector did not object.”

“Probably because he arranged it while she was being treated for shrapnel wounds.” That was one of the things that irritated Mustang most about Fiat. The man had absolutely no sense of gallantry.

He blew past the sentries at the prison block door, daring them to stop him. They did not. Nor did the sergeant on duty at the warden's desk make any objection to his storming straight through to the interrogation rooms, where Fiat himself was waiting among a gaggle of his staff and McCrae's police officers. The bearded man turned a welcoming grin on Mustang as he approached. “Brigadier General! I'm glad my message reached you.”

“But strangely your message saying you were going to be taking a contingent of men to the League's mansion house to arrest one of their most senior and respected members got lost in transit.” Mustang would have liked to wither Fiat to dust with sarcasm alone but veiled insults just bounced off him. “I would like an explanation, Colonel.”

“I'm terribly sorry for leaving you out of the loop, sir,” Fiat said, sounding anything but, “It was simply a matter of moving ASAP as soon as we had the intel that made it clear Euler was our man.”

“And that intelligence was, what, exactly?”

“Ah.” Fiat held up a finger as McCrae herself emerged from the room behind him. “If you'll take your place in the viewing gallery, Brigadier General, I shall demonstrate it shortly. Have you finished, Inspector?”

“Sure. He's all yours.” Hands in the pockets of her trench-coat, McCrae glanced over her shoulder. “Cool customer, though. He had an answer for every question I asked. Gives alibis for every one of the murders. Seems to be angling for it all being some terrible misunderstanding and that we're all idiots. Whichever comes first.”

“Now, we shall have to see what we can do about that, won't we?” Fiat's smugness was palpable.

“Come on,” Mustang snapped and led the way into the dark, cramped passage behind the room. There was just about space for the four of them to stand, Ed on one side, Hawkeye on the other, McCrae at the end of the row, all facing a big sheet of glass. Through some trick of optics, the window was a mirror from the other side, so all the prisoner in the cell would see was their own reflection. It was a ghoulish contraption designed to allow spectators on interrogations, a necessity that made Mustang's skin crawl for a wide variety of reasons.

Euler was secured in stocks fixed to a table in the middle of the room on the other side of the glass. He slumped tiredly in his chair yet still contrived to look thoroughly bored by his surroundings. Lieutenant Ross sat opposite, alert and attentive. Fiat came in and took a seat next to her, settling down comfortably, almost lazily. Mustang folded his arms.

“And you are?” Euler asked lightly, shifting a little.

“Colonel Victor Fiat, Military Court Martial Investigations department.”

“Oh. Am I to be subjected to a court martial?”

Fiat did not answer, just favoured Euler with a slightly amused, very patronising smirk. He turned over one of the papers he had brought in with him, pushing aside the heavy black ledger against which he had been holding them. “Can you tell me something, Dr Euler?”

“I'm sure I can tell you a great many things, Colonel. Not, I fear, why you have seen fit to detain me in this manner.”

“No? A shame. As an alchemist, Dr Euler, what is your speciality?”

Euler blinked. Then snorted. “Mineralogy. Mineral analysis, categorisation and extraction. I'm a miner, essentially. I worked as an adviser for various mining concerns until the State began to demand direct control over judging the quality of the produce.”

“That must have been annoying for you?”

“Not really. I always preferred theoretical work.”

“But you don't have any objection to getting your hands dirty?”

“One must always be prepared to put one's theories into action.”

“Hence your recent trip to South City?”

Mustang sensed Ed stirring beside him. Of course, Fullmetal knew Euler had been absent from the League recently, some time before the murders in Central. He was probably wondering about the significance.

“I was doing a favour for a friend,” was Euler's reply, “Assessing some samples for him. He has an estate in one of the nearby towns.”

“But you were in South City for a few days.”

“One day, I believe.”

“The day the Diamond Skin Alchemist was murdered.”

Fiat said it casually. Euler responded in kind. “My apologies, I don't believe I can attest to the coincidence. Who is that?”

“Oh, just an ex-State Alchemist. A very nasty individual. A disgrace to the uniform. What is your attitude to the State Military, Dr Euler?”

“I don't really have an attitude towards it, Colonel.”

“You were never tempted to apply to the Alchemy Programme?”

“I told you: I'm a theorist. I've no interest in practical warfare.”

“So you oppose it?”

“That's not what I said.”

“No. It isn't.” Fiat toyed with the edge of a page. “You know, I find that interesting. After all, the League makes much play of being the alternative to the Military. The LIA's propaganda is all about the short comings and faults of the SA Programme.”

“Perhaps so. My personal feelings are not those of the entire League.”

“No, I suppose not.”

He left a long silence there. Mustang could practically hear Fiat counting off the seconds in his head.

“You are a nationalist, aren't you, Dr Euler?” he asked after he was done pausing.

Euler gave another snort. “Any sane man is a nationalist.”

“Despite the inconvenience the State caused you?”

“A nation is not built on kind sentiments, Colonel. As a solider, I'm sure you appreciate that.”

“Yes . . .” Fiat tapped the table. “Shall I tell you what I appreciate? The telephone. It's a marvellous invention. The speed with which we can pass information around the country – beautiful. I'd never have been able to put this list together so quickly without it.”

“You're expecting me to ask what is on that list, I believe.”

“I was going to tell you anyway: this is a list of eight dead alchemists.”

Fullmetal drew breath sharply. “ _Eight_ ,” he repeated incredulously.

“Not now.”

His head jerked around. “What do you – you _knew_ about –”

“I said not now,” Mustang hissed.

Ed's jaw worked but he did not say anything else.

“Four of them were killed in Central this week,” Fiat was continuing, “Four were killed in other parts of the country in the last month. In the south, to be exact.”

“Including this . . . what was it, 'Diamond Skin' person?” Euler was still affecting boredom.

“Indeed, indeed. Would you like to know what connects them all? Beyond being alchemists and dead, I mean.”

“I imagine you are going to tell me.”

“They're all ex-State Alchemists. The reasons vary. A dishonourable discharge. Several who objected to policy. Some who were only part of the programme in the first place to further their research. Disgraces, quitters and dilettantes, to a person.”

“I really wouldn't know.”

“See, that is the interesting thing. I think you would. Especially since a fair number . . . well, the majority actually, of these names, are people who were part of one of your study-groups at the LIA. Were, in fact, supported by yourself for membership of that body.” Ostentatiously, Fiat began to read from the paper in front of him. “Alex Westland. Jill Villiers. Jon Folland. Titus Breguet. Dieter Martin-Baker.” He raised his eyes from the page. “There wasn't much left of Westland or Villiers but the police in South City are very thorough. They were able to make an identification after I telephoned some details through. As I said, it's a marvellous invention.”

Euler said nothing. His boredom was gone, replaced with cold inexpressiveness.

“Could it have been him?” Mustang asked Ed, “That you saw in the cloak?”

“I don't know. Maybe. He's tall enough. But he's what, a hundred years old?”

“You should have seen how fast he moved when he was trying to get away from us,” muttered the Inspector.

“Do you expect me to deny that I knew those people, Colonel?” Euler's lip curled. “You are talking about my colleagues and students. Some of whom, I might add, I was not even aware were dead.”

“My sincere apologies for distressing you if that is the case.” Fiat matched and possibly exceeded his coldness. “Tell me, doctor: what did you think of Führer Bradley?”

“I find it astonishing you should be so interested in my opinions.”

“Humour me.”

“I think not.”

“For someone accused of murder, you seem remarkably uninterested in defending yourself.”

“Defending myself against _what_?” Euler demand exasperatedly, “All you and that irritating policewoman have done for the past hour is make insinuations! I am supposed to have been involved in the deaths of eight people? Were is the evidence? The witnesses? At the moment it seems I am under arrest purely because someone thought I looked suspicious!”

All trace of good humour was now gone from Fiat's expression. He laced his fingers together. “You seem to have conveniently forgotten your attempt to run away earlier today, an attempt that came close to seriously injuring a number of people.”

“I do not think I am the only person in this country who would have reacted poorly to seeing a State _lynch mob_ coming towards them.”

“I dare say you're right. Do you know who the eighth name on this list is?”

“How could I? I don't know what order it's in.”

“Date. The last name is Linus Lohner.”

“Is it?”

“Or Thom Lindau, if you'd prefer.”

Once more, Euler said nothing.

“You don't seem terribly surprised,” Fiat observed.

“By what?”

“The fact your fellow lead in the LIA's MMSD was living under a pseudonym. Or that he's dead. Either of these.”

As much as he could, Euler pulled himself up and leaned forward. “You are clearly building to some grand theory, Colonel. Please can we dispense with the games and just get to the point?”

“Would you like to see the return of the Bradley regime, doctor?”

He actually laughed, although not very sincerely. “I don't see that happening any time soon what with the man being dead. You might want to add him to your list.”

“Obviously I don't mean the actual Führer. But his policies. His attitude to this country and its place in the world. Strength through power! Glorious war in all directions! Conquest, expansion, military law and order! Does that appeal to you, doctor?”

“A little while ago, you seemed to be implying I should resent Bradley's rule for depriving me of a job.”

“And you said a nation is not built on kind sentiments. You said you were a nationalist.”

“Meaning by implication that I believe running around the country murdering other alchemists will somehow magically bring back the good-old-days? Colonel, this is fantasy. I'm sixty-seven, for heaven's sake!”

“And may I say you are surprisingly spritely for your age! But of course I'm not saying that you did it on your own. We know that's not true. After all, there was Thom Lindau, wasn't there?”

Mustang eased a hand up to his face and rubbed the ache in his cheek-bone. Clenching his mouth shut was aggravating the remains of his left eye but he could not see himself stopping any time soon. He still did not know what Fiat was building to, what solid piece of evidence underpinned his insinuations and half-formed accusations. Oh, there was a shape to it all right, but one that was so easily deniable. Resisting arrest was about the worst of the crimes they could actually _prove_ against Euler. That was as suggestive as the rest and it still left Mustang with visions of newspaper headlines proclaiming a stitch-up directed at a highly respected independent academic. A sixty-seven year old theorist! Fiat had marched in with a squad of armed men then insisted on dragging him back to Central HQ! Now this verbal run-around! Was he _trying_ to be inflammatory?

“Thom is – was a grown adult quite capable of acting for himself and without my knowledge.”

“With _out_ your knowledge, Dr Euler? That's interesting. Particularly given that you were supposed to be in a meeting with him at the time of the attack on Major Elric.”

For the first time, Euler's composure cracked. “Excuse me?!” he spluttered.

“Well, that is what you told Lady Handley-Paige, isn't it?”

“I recall telling her I was in a meeting, not with whom I –” Stopping, probably realising that he was an hair's breadth from saying something highly unfortunately, Euler regained some of his icy demeanour. “Are you trying to make me incriminate myself in some manner?”

“I think you already did that, doctor. When you altered the LIA's room booking register to account for yourself and Mr Lindau being conspicuously absent yesterday afternoon.” Fiat drew the ledger into the space between them and opened it at a marked page. “That is your name, yes? Alongside Thom Lindau's? The ink looks a little fresher than the rest of the page, doesn't it? I suppose that's normal, people coming and going all the time, plans changing at the last minute but I am told the protocol is to go through the secretary. And I am assured by Miss Panavia that you did not ask her to add a booking for that particular room at any time. She even had cause to check that room's availability around lunchtime yesterday, at which point this entry was entirely absent. Quite unfortunate, really. Without this, all we would have to connect you to the murders would be the strange coincidence that they were all members of the group you organised and ran, and the trail of bodies coinciding so neatly with your own travel arrangements. And that you, a self-proclaimed nationalist and patriot, should be on good terms with a man who was by all accounts a dedicated member of Bradley's clandestine scientific projects – not to mention, who was living under and assumed name to distance himself from same. And . . . oh yes. That you attempted to inflict serious injury of members of the city police and the Investigations Department not more than three hours ago.”

Eyes glued to the book before him, Euler visibly swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing up and down his scrawny neck. “I believe,” he managed to say eventually, “that I am entitled to some form of legal representation. I would like to arrange that. Immediately.”

 

* * *

 

“When the hell were you going to tell me there were more bodies?” Ed wanted to shake Mustang by the eye-patch. What was the bastard playing at this time? Didn't he think that maybe Ed might need to _know_ a little detail like there being _four more fucking murders_ to investigate.

“When I was sure they were connected to the ones in Central,” Mustang said without hesitation, “The identification of the bodies in South only came through this morning and before I could tell you about the connection, Fiat arrested Euler.”

“Then tell me now! Were they killed in the same way? Where in South City were they found? Do we know what they were doing there?”

“Three of the bodies washed out of the sewers. The fourth was found in woodland. No, we have no idea what they were doing there. We don't even know who the fourth body was, just that he was carrying a damaged State Alchemy pocket-watch. Fullmetal, if I had had any definite proof that they were connected to what's been happening here, I would have told you. There wasn't, so I needed you focusing on what was happening here.”

“I'm not that easily distracted, damnit! You should have told me!”

“And what would you have done? Rushed down to South to look at rotting corpses? I shouldn't be having to explain myself on this!”

The sharp note in Mustang's voice nearly raised it above the whisper in which they were arguing.

“OK,” Ed sighed, figuring from how pissed off the General had to get for it to show that it was time to back down, “Sorry.”

The fire in Mustang's eye simmered down a little. “No. You're right. I should have told you sooner that it was a possibility. I was trying to manoeuvre around Fiat. I got the impression he didn't want me looking that way so I did as quietly as possible.”

“And I'm not quiet.” Ed flashed a grin. “I get it.”

They were standing off to the side as Euler was led back to the cells. Fiat was a little way down the corridor from them, deep in discussion with McCrae and looking every millimetre the cat that got the whole fucking aviary. Ed nodded at him. “He showed you that ledger just now?”

“Yes. And as physical evidence goes, it's reasonable. If what the League's secretary said was true . . . it's suspicious.”

“No kidding. Euler didn't say it was put there by someone else, either. That's what I'd have done.”

Hawkeye stirred from her silent watch at Mustang's right hand. “He looked scared.”

As one, they looked down towards the cells then across to Fiat. “We are going to go over every shred of evidence we have,” Mustang told them, “and we are going to make absolutely certain that the case Fiat's building here holds water and if it doesn't, we are going to put a stop to this because suspicious or not, I am damned if I'm going to let a man be convicted just because he looked scared during an interrogation.”


	9. Escapement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Sorry to any of you dear readers who have been waiting for this chapter - real life is getting in the way a bit.  
> * I have the next chapter finished but not edited and it's a long one, so I can't promise an update next week.  
> * The chapter after that needs writing and it's the climax so . . . yeah, sorry if this becomes a month-long hiatus.  
> * Hope you enjoy *this* chapter!

“This doesn't make sense,” Breda declared.

It was the wrong side of seven o'clock in the evening and they were still gathered around the desks in the outer office, pouring over a week's worth of investigations. Fuery had been sent out to retrieve some sort of supper (in contravention of good discipline but Hawkeye was not planning on objecting), which was just as well given that Ed was spreading a growing collection of alchemy notes across his desk in addition to the one Falman usually occupied. The General, down to his shirtsleeves, was feverishly searching through interview reports for the fifth time. He had spent most of the afternoon on the phone in the inner office, exhausting every potentially useful contact. “What doesn't?” he asked, not looking up.

Breda put down the pencil he had been chewing and bounced his fist against an open palm. “If you're gonna go around killing people, why would you get them to join your club first? That's a really obvious connection. It was pretty much the first thing that got picked up on, wasn't it?”

Hawkeye put aside a typed copy of Lieutenant Ross' notes. “The Diamond Skin Alchemist was not part of Euler's group.”

“OK, but the rest were, or were going to be. But why?”

“Perhaps Euler and Lohner saw an opportunity to gather all these people in one place and pick them off,” the General suggested.

“Sorry sir, I don't think that washes. Breguet joined the League a couple of months _before_ Lohner did.”

“Then perhaps it was Breguet joining that set them on to the idea.” Mustang raised his eye. “But why go to the trouble of creating the group in the first place when Euler had access, even approval over every member of the League anyway? You're right, that doesn't make sense.”

“Unless they were all working together.”

Mustang folded his fingers together and put his chin on them. “Go on.”

“Well it just seems to me that – Fiat seems to think this is about Euler and Lohner going round killing a bunch of people who quit the Military or disgraced it, right? But if they supported _Bradley_ , wouldn't they go after guys who stayed in? And if all the people in this group quit or were thrown out . . . doesn't it make more sense that they'd group together?”

“We don't know anything about the politics of the victims,” Hawkeye mused aloud, “There's not that much evidence in their records one way or the other.”

“Right. So could be they were all working together and this is . . . I don't know, maybe they fell out? Maybe this is all a feud within the group. Alchemists can be pretty temperamental. Present company excepted, obviously.”

“So you're saying that Fiat might have the right person . . . but the wrong motive.” Mustang's expression grew distant. “All right, that's an interesting line of thought. If these people were all in it together, if there was some sort of conspiracy in the League – what were they doing? What is it they're started killing each other over?”

“They were studying something.” Ed's sudden entry into the conversation was something of a surprise given he had been silent for the best part of an hour, without giving any indication he was even listening to what was going on around him. “They're a group of alchemists. They'll have been working on something.”

“Any idea what that might have been, Fullmetal?”

“Not what they were writing about. This really is all about mining. Would you kill people over mining?”

“If there was a lot of money in it. What?” Breda shrugged. “The motive doesn't have to be political.”

“Yeah well, nothing in here is near workable in real life yet –”

Someone knocked on the door sharply and came in almost immediately. Hawkeye straightened, not quite at attention but ready to go to it at a moment's notice. It was Fiat.

He seemed taken aback to see them all sitting there and it took him a noticeable second to recover his poise. Only a second though. He cleared his throat. “Might I have a word, Brigadier General? Privately?”

Ed stood up with a scrape of chair legs. “I'll go and see if Michael wants to eat with us.” He did not exactly push past the Colonel on the way out, just gave the strong impression that was what he was doing in spirit.

“Come through,” Mustang told Fiat, who had not so much as blinked. He did not bother to put his uniform jacket back on.

They went into the inner office and as the door closed behind them, Hawkeye and Breda exchanged glances. “That can't be good,” Breda muttered.

 

* * *

 

Mustang took a seat behind his desk. It was an obvious move to establish his authority and one that felt decidedly necessary given his visitor. Fiat drew up one of the other chairs without being asked. He did at least concede the courtesy of letting Mustang speak first. “What can I do for you, Colonel?”

“I would appreciate it if you would step back, Brigadier General, and allow me to do my job.”

When Mustang did not respond, Fiat went on, “I am grateful for your expert assessment of the alchemy side of this investigation and I am not insensitive to the need for caution in dealing with the independent alchemy movement. However I feel that it is no longer appropriate for you to second guess me at every turn. Don't you agree?”

The ache in Mustang's cheek was back again. For the sake of appearances, he could not rub his jaw. That only made it more aggravating. “No Colonel. I do not.” He put his fingertips together. “In my opinion, you are pursuing your investigation in a reckless manner and are coming damn close to exceeding your authority. Court Martial Investigations is supposed to deal with internal matters, not act as a substitute police force. The Military doesn't enforce civilian law any more. You cannot just decide to bring a suspect into a military prison because you feel like it. The police asked for our help with the alchemy side of the investigation, not to take over for them. Now maybe I can't stop you doing that. But if you are going to continue, I will do everything in my power to stop you from destroying what good will exists between the Military and the civilian authorities. Including making absolutely sure you _get the right man_. Am I clear, _Colonel_?”

The springs in Fiat's chair creaked as he crossed his legs at the ankle with a casualness that was completely at odds with the rigidity of his spine. He lifted a hand to his beard then thought better of it. “May I be equally clear, Brigadier General? At _least_ eight ex-service people are dead. Murdered extremely violently. To me, that says we are dealing either with someone with a severe grudge or with a conspiracy. And in either case, it is my duty to do everything in _my_ power to protect those who have served their country, for good or ill, and to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice. I have no intention of hiding behind jurisdictional boundaries or playing nice for the politicians and the press when there are _lives_ in danger.”

 _Roy Mustang, you are an idiot_. The thought was unbidden, of course, but none the less apposite. The crawling sensation of having misjudged a situation prickled up the back of Mustang's neck, right to the hairline. He dropped his chin on to the bridge of his interlaced fingers and half-smiled to himself. “A conspiracy, huh?”

“Possibly.”

“Tell me why you brought Euler here?”

Fiat hesitated briefly, but only briefly. “To keep him safe.”

“Because arresting him so dramatically was intended to provoke a reaction from anyone who's working with him and you don't yet know what form that will take.”

“I have people keeping a watch on the rest of the MMSG. As does McCrae. As do you.”

“And you didn't inform me you were going to arrest Euler like that because you thought I would stop you.”

“Frankly, Brigadier General, strictly off the record, I don't trust you.”

Mustang's smile widened. “Reasonable.”

He lifted his chin and slid his chair back a couple of centimetres, then shoved a hand into his fringe. “It's still a risk and if you are wrong . . .” There was no need to finish that sentence, clearly.

“Haven't you ever taken a risk to expose a conspiracy?” Fiat asked rhetorically, a slightly smirk on his lips.

“It cost me an eye, Colonel. What will it cost you, I wo –”

_THOOM._

They shot to their feet simultaneously, heads turning to try to gauge the direction of the noise. Shouts came distantly from outside, following in quick succession by an alarm bell. Fiat's face went pale. “What the hell was that?”

Mustang wrenched his desk drawer open. “At a guess, the reaction you were trying to provoke.”

 

* * *

 

Ed pelted out into the rear parade ground, taking the steps two, three at a time. Soldiers were shouting over the alarms and each other, running from every direction to converge on the prison block. A plume of dust and smoke billowed from – it was hard to work out but Ed figured it was the outer wall immediately behind the prison. Had someone set off a bomb? Or was it –

From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of someone keeping pace with him. Michael. “What the hell are you doing – why are you following me?! Get back inside!”

“But – if there's – I could help!”

“Don't be an idiot! You're supposed to be here for your own safety! This is not safe!”

As if to prove his point, the front of the prison block chose that instant to explode. Brick fragments pelted the approaching soldiers, adding pained yells to the general noise and confusion. Two figures stood silhouetted in the light that spilled through the hole, one hooded and cloaked, the other a little taller, bare armed and wild haired. There was something almost familiar about that one . . .

Ed did not have time to work out what before one of the soldiers shouted, “Halt! Stop and raise your hands! NOW!”

A couple dozen rifles were levelled at the invaders, a couple dozen men and women preparing to unleash a hail of bullets at the first sign that the order would not be obeyed. The hooded figure tilted its head but did not otherwise move. The other one raised their fists over their shoulders. Ed was gripped by a horrible premonition connected to the question of how exactly these people had just made a wall explode.

Spotlights swung over the scene, directed from the sentry towers, catching them in a white glare. The figure with raised hands had yellow hair. That was all Ed got to see, all he actually registered seeing anyway. Almost faster than the eye could follow, the yellow-haired person dropped into a crouch and brought their fists crashing down on the ground.

The parade ground erupted into chunks of earth and stone. Soldier after soldier went down like rows of skittles in the path of a charging bull, thrown that way and this in a flurry of screams and hopelessly off-target shots. Jumping forward, Ed planted his hands on the ground in front of him, transmuting a barrier just in time to stop the wave of destruction going any further. The soldiers still on their feet – the ones lucky enough to have been behind him – opened fire, aiming for the obvious threat with no immediate success. Ed wasn’t even sure the bullets were reaching the crouching figure.

In a swirl of their cloak, the other one did _something_ and the spotlights went out. There was still the light from inside the prison but before anyone could take any advantage of that, the alchemist sprang up into a leap that – well, it should have been impossible.

“Shit!” Ed clapped again, drawing out a blade, setting himself into a defensive stance. He couldn’t be sure but it had looked like the guy was coming right for him –

 _Click. WHOOMPH_.

Flames sliced through the air on the other side of his barrier, a curtain of intense flame sweeping around to encircle the two figures. Mustang charged out from the main block, still in his shirtsleeves, gloves on his hands and fingers ready to click again. Hawkeye was at his shoulder. Surprisingly, so was Fiat.

“Your orders, Brigadier General?” he thundered as they cleared the steps in a way that left Ed baffled until it dawned on him that Fiat was being loud for the benefit of anyone who might not realise Mustang's rank in the absence of his insignia, though honestly how many frickin' one-eyed bastard generals were there – ?

“Get the injured clear!” Right hand raised to control the fire, Mustang swept the other out to the side and pointed. “You, you, you. Fan out and take positions where you can shoot anything that moves within the circle I've created. Fullmetal, keep the ground solid. If they try to pull the earthquake stunt again –”

A howl drowned out whatever else he was going to say, as angry and agonised a noise as Ed had ever heard, loud enough to freeze them all in their tracks, piercing enough that Ed was pretty sure he wasn't the only one who wanted to take a step back.

Some _thing_ surged through the curtain of fire, a bawling, burning mass of darkness. It landed, hunched over in front of them, flames licking from its limbs in great streamers. Even as those died, steam curled up from both clothes and skin, thick with the stink of burnt flesh. Ed's stomach turned over, as much at the thought of what it must have taken to leap into the fire as by the results.

The thing raised its head and looked straight at him and oh fuck, those eyes –

Mustang clicked. Pin-wheels scorched its back and it howled, throwing out a fist. Red light blew out the paving slabs under him, catapulting him off his feet. Hawkeye fired but impossibly, the burnt thing dodged out of the way. Its unfolded as it slipped and danced around the bullets and a steady white glow crawled up its arms and legs. Ed could see the muscle and sinew rebuilding as it moved, the skin and clothes growing back.

He swore and lunged, trying to get close enough to stab or cut. The creature met him half-way, slamming into him, using its still-healing body as a battering-ram. Ed had to fight to keep his footing and of course that left him fully on the defensive, only able to block the thing's hammering fists without the room to strike back. That close, he realised, even Hawkeye would have trouble hitting it without hitting him. _Shit shit shitshitshit_ –

It got a tight grip on his auto-mail arm and punching it repeatedly with his flesh fist didn't do much to change that. By brute force and mechanical muscle, he pushed it back enough to get in a kick, fighting for the leverage to throw it off. As they struggled, he saw the skin on its shoulder reappear and with it, the ouroboros, a red welt amidst other, less clear markings. The face was coming back too, piece by piece, a stain spreading from those damn eyes –

Yelling in exertion, Ed found his balance and pivoted with all his strength, flinging the homunculus over his shoulder. It came down like a cat, on all fours, hissing, ready to pounce again. There was a fuzz of hair on its head now, not yet long enough to have colour again. Red lightning crackled around its fingers.

Coming out of nowhere, Michael jumped on to its back, slapping it hard with his right hand, just below its neck. It shrieked and bucked, nearly throwing him off with that alone. Teeth bared, he held on long enough to – Ed could not see what he was doing at first but there was the tell-tale energy of a transmutation, which made the homunculus scream even louder. It reached over its head – the hair was almost all grown back now, the face almost complete – reached over its head and grabbed for Michael's throat. At the very last moment, he created an air jet strong enough to carry him away, fingertips leaving last of all and with that last touch –

As the creature was turned about by the blast, Ed saw the array blazing orange against its skin. There was a combustion flash and then –

Its head disappeared into a ball of black/green smoke, thick and sickly. The screams choked off as it flailed blindly, clawing at its throat, at its back. It lurched and staggered –

And something whizzed into the ground at Ed's feet. A bullet? Had one of the sentries fired and missed – ? No. Between the twilight and the lingering remains of Mustang's pyrotechnics, he could clearly see the weirdly-shaped dagger sticking out of the torn-up dirt. What the hell –

The heavy smell of ozone filled the air. There was a crackle, a spark, a sudden cold –

Light, blinding, painful light. A thunder-clap loud enough to leave his ears ringing. A blast of dust and shrapnel.

Ed just about managed to stay upright, instinct throwing his arm across his face.

The first thing he saw when his vision cleared was the crater where the middle of the parade ground had been, not deep but very wide.

The very next thing he saw was absolutely no sign whatsoever of the homunculus or the hooded figure it had come in with.

 

* * *

 

“Do you need me up there? I can be there in half an hour, forty minutes.” Winry could hear the urgency in her voice, the worry. It was nothing compared to the black mass of fear trying to claw its way out of her chest.

“ _Nah, it's OK. I'm OK. Nothing busted.”_ She could have cursed Ed for how off-hand he was about it. _“Don't worry.”_

Like hell. “I still want to see that for myself.”

“ _I'll come over in the morning. I've got to stay here, Mustang's coordinating a search and he wants me on stand-by. Not that we'll find anything, those guys were good. Whoever they were.”_ That was _too_ off-handed. He _knew_ who it was.

She opened her mouth to say so then stopped. Suppose he couldn't say it over the phone? Suppose someone was listening in. It was easy to do that, even at Central HQ, if you knew how and she did so it would be pretty dumb to just blurt something important out. “All right,” she instead. “But it's no bother if you need me to come up there.”

“ _No, you said you had stuff you wanted to do, it'd just get in your way. I'll come back to Gracia's.”_

But if he did that, he wouldn't have the General and Hawkeye and an entire fortress full of soldiers to watch out for him – no, that was stupid, it was Ed, he could handle anything – until the day he couldn't –

“Get Mr Breda to drive you over. If you have damaged something that you haven't noticed, best not to put your auto-mail under any undue pressure. OK?”

“O – kay . . . OK, I'll do that. See you tomorrow, yeah? About nine?”

“Sounds good!”

“Sounds good,” she repeated bitterly, dropping the receiver, “Sounds . . . damn it.”

She was _not_ going to get weepy in the middle of Gracia's hallway, especially since she'd been telling Al that this kind of stuff was part of Ed's job only that morning. Nothing about this was a surprise, not really, not after so long knowing what kind of life he led. But – hell, being attacked twice in two days? That was bad even by his standards. For it to happen in the middle of the most heavily guarded place in the city . . . and damn it, what was he not telling her this time?

“Auntie Winry?” Elisia appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking anxious as she caught sight of Winry with her head in her hands. “Are you all right?”

“I'm . . .” Fine? That would be a lie. “It's . . .”

Damn. It.

How _did_ you explain to a ten-year-old that your boyfriend had just had another near-miss with the grim reaper?

 

* * *

 

Al listened to Winry tiredly relaying Ed's phone call and massaged his aching head. All afternoon, he'd been trying to work while angry League members argued about just how terrible it was that the Military had marched in and arrested Dr Euler like that. Dirty looks and sidelong glances told him that he and Noah were not the most popular people at the mansion either. Now there had been another attack anyway!

“He didn't give you any more details?” Noah was sitting next to Gracia on the sofa. Elisia had been shooed upstairs almost as soon as dinner was over so they could talk without worrying about her. Knowing children, Al was not entirely willing to bet she wasn't busy finding some way to sneak back down and listen in.

“Only that Michael saved his skin again.” Winry rubbed absently at the callouses on her hands. “General Mustang too but it's not like he'd properly admit to that bit.”

Al snorted. “Did he say anything about Dr Euler?”

“No. Is that weird? I thought that was a bit weird.”

“It was in the evening paper,” Gracia said, “That they'd arrested him, I mean. I didn't get a chance to read it properly so I don't know what they were saying about that.”

“Probably that it's the return to military tyranny if the reporter was listening to half the things a lot of the League people were saying.” Letting his hands drop from his not-at-all improved head, Al screwed up his nose. “Even though it was the police inspector who actually arrested him and he tried to slice her to bits . . . are you _sure_ he didn't –”

“Al, if you ask me if he told me anything else, I'm going to get a wrench to throw at you, so help me . . . I'd tell you if he had!”

“Sorry, sorry. I'm just . . . worried,” he completed lamely.

“We all are,” Noah whispered.

That shut him up pretty thoroughly and perhaps for the first time since Winry had taken the call, he really noticed how tense and drawn everyone was. Gracia, bringing up a kid in a city apparently crawling with mad murderers; Noah, who was only just getting a handle on life in Amestris and already was getting roped into catching criminals; Winry who, just, well –

“There's nothing we can do tonight, is there?”

“Well, there's the washing up,” Gracia said briskly, “which I shall leave to you while I go and see what Elisia thinks she's doing, listing at the keyhole.” A muffled thump on the stairs suggested that even if she could not actually see through walls, she knew her daughter all too well.

Winry flopped down into an armchair and grabbed one of the heaps off the coffee table. “I need to go over some shop-buying paperwork but I can come dry things in a minute.”

“No, you stay there,” Noah ordered, “I'll do the drying. Al?”

“Yeah, I'll go get started.” At least if he was focusing on not breaking any plates, he might not worry so much.

He could hope, anyway.

 

* * *

 

“You are a very lucky young man,” Ross told Michael Dorian sternly.

He flushed guiltily at the implied rebuke. “I know it was probably stupid but none of you could get a shot in and I thought that thing was going to kill him.”

“As long as you appreciate that it wasn't judgement that got you through it.”

Sitting in one of the side-rooms close to General Mustang's office, they had just finished going over Michael's version of what had happened outside the prison block. It tallied with everyone else's and there was not much in the way of new details. In the heat of the moment, amid the fire and confusion, it seemed Michael had not gotten that good a look at the attackers before jumping in to save Ed. What he had seen was impossible and grotesque.

Luckily, perhaps for all of them, no one so far had uttered the dreaded 'h' word.

Ross thanked him for his time and stepped out. To her considerable surprise, she nearly walked into General Mustang himself. “Sir!” She snapped off a salute, which he returned distractedly.

“Is that the last witness statement for tonight, Lieutenant?”

“Uh, yes sir. For me anyway. Warrant Officer Bloch is interviewing some of the infantry men who were hurt in the attack.” Probably by an equal amount of luck to that shown by Dorian, none of the sentries had actually been killed.

The General was not quite looking at her so much as the door she had closed behind her. “What was your impression of him?”

“Of Mr Dorian? He seems . . .” She grasped for the right word. “Pleasant. Inoffensive, I suppose you could say. Not exactly a hardened warrior.”

“No.” There was something doubtful in the way he said that. “Did he say anything about the array he used?”

“That it was the first one he thought of. Some sort of . . . poison gas reaction? He gave me the chemical formula – had to get him to write it down . . .” Turning over her notebook, she showed him the scribbled and then hastily corrected string of symbols.

Mustang's black eye narrowed, glinting like a chip of coal. “He wrote that?”

“Ah, yes-sir.”

They stood like that for a long second or two: her holding the notebook out, him staring at it, expression unreadable.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” His lips twitched into the briefest curve of gratitude. “Don't let me hold you up any longer.”

“Sir.” Taking that as a firm dismissal, she walked quickly away. At the end of the corridor, she risked a look back. He was already a blue dot vanishing into the distance.

Now what was _that_ about?

 

* * *

 

“When it was all over, they found Euler in his cell. He'd been stabbed through the heart.” Ed did his best to divorce the statement from any kind of emotion to make sure it didn't devolve into one long string of obscenities. “Guess they wanted to shut him up with something more definite than just dropping a wall on him.”

Winry, done with checking over his auto-mail, gripped his hand tight.

They were on the sofa in Gracia's front room, watching Al pace back and forward across the rug. When had his brother gotten so restless, Ed wondered silently, so prone to move about when he was upset. Was it a side-effect of so much enforced stillness while he was stuck as a soul in armour? Or was it some side-effect of going through puberty that Ed just hadn't really noticed before?

With visible effort, Al brought himself to a stop next to the chair Noah was sitting in. “I . . . I think I heard Euler talking to someone after you and Michael were attacked. At least, I think it would have been about then. 'This is a disaster.' That's what he said. I don't know who he was talking to and I'm sorry I didn't tell you but I just didn't really put it together until Euler was arrested –”

“It's OK. It wouldn't have made any difference if we had known, Fiat would've still got to him first.” Halfway through the reassurance, Ed realised the obvious implication. “If he was talking to someone, then the guy in the hood must have been someone else from the League. Damn it! How many lunatics is that place hiding?”

“I don't know who it was.” Al chewed his lip. “I didn't see and I couldn't hear them.”

“What were the people who attacked the prison like?” Winry was still holding Ed's hand. “You said there were two of them – did you see anything any of us might recognise?”

He'd been putting off telling them and it looked like that was as long as that was going to be possible. “Yeah . . . about that. I didn't see anything of the guy in the hood. Seems no one did until he – or whatever – hit us with that big light show. Still don't really know what that was. Near as I can tell, they set off a massive transmutation in a circle they'd created from fucking _throwing knives_. Found a few afterwards, they'd been melted but I think that's what they were.”

“He picked out a whole circle with knives?” Al was nonplussed.

“No, just a few points.”

“Oh! Like the electric array those mercenaries used to attack the Ishbalan camps. You remember?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“What about the other one?” Noah asked, “The other person?”

“Some of us got a good look at him, yeah.” Ed pinched the bridge of his nose, holding the cool metal there until it warmed up. “He . . . he was a homunculus.” He could hear Al's sharp intake of breath, feel Winry flinch at the word, saw Noah's frown of concern. “No doubt about it. He healed, I saw the mark.”

“But . . . all of the homunculi died,” Al protested, “Even Envy, you said –”

“Yes, I know. It's not one of the seven. It's . . .” Damn, it was sticking in his throat. “He . . . looked like . . . me.”

It was Noah who reacted first. Her eyes went wide. “The Edward from my world.”

“I think so. Yeah.”

“But he was . . .” Al's hands swept shapes in the air.

“I know. He wasn't anything like this before. Back in France . . . it was like there were bits of his mind missing. But he could do alchemy and this homunculus . . . he was deconstructing matter, blowing it apart. I saw him up close. He was . . . Mustang burned him to a crisp and he was still trying to kill me. Michael hit him with poison gas and it didn't knock him down . . . whatever happened after he came through the Gate, it's made him as bad as the other homunculi ever were.”

“Like what happened with Wrath. After Envy manipulated him and fed him . . . Stone fragments . . .”

“ _Yeah_. I'd thought of that too.”

“Shit,” Al concluded emphatically.

“Sorry,” Winry said, “What does that mean? Stone fragments? You mean pieces of the Philosopher's Stone? But I thought that was gone . . .”

“Stone fragments don't have to be pieces of a finished stone. They can be a step towards making it. An impure form that can be refined or combined to produce something closer to the final product.” Al was going paler the longer he thought about it. “It could mean that someone's trying to make another Stone.”

“Or that they found some old research on it. We don't know yet.” Ed sighed, feeling utterly exhausted. “And we're not going to find out until we find him.”

They sat around in total silence for nearly a minute, each of them lost in their own thoughts. When he broke it, Al did so slowly, as if still piecing things together. “If it _is_ another murderer hiding at the mansion house, if they have Edw – this homunculus and it's all linked to the murders and Dr Euler's study group – does that mean that the homunculus is what they were hiding? Is that what this is all about?”

Better that than actually trying to make a Stone, Ed thought. Aloud, he said, “Maybe. For now we just have to concentrate on finding the homunculus and I guess the rest of the study group. It's the only damn lead we've got.”

“We should tell Penny about there probably being another killer in the League. And about what else they might have been hiding there.”

“Al, we can't just tell her it's a homunculus! Right now only the four of us and Mustang and Hawkeye really know what that thing was that attacked headquarters last night! We gotta keep it that way, at least until –”

“Then I won't tell her what it is exactly.”

“Look, maybe you shouldn't – for all we know, it could be her that's behind it all!”

“What – Ed, she's the one who turned Euler in!”

“And then he was killed! Euler was acting guilty, sure, but that doesn't mean he was guilty of the murders or whatever they were over. Al, we can't be sure of _anything_ now.”

Noah spoke up quietly. “I trust her.” She waited until Ed was looking at her to add, “I think she really cares about the League and was upset about going to the police. She didn't want to. I don't think she's behind any of this.”

“And I trust Noah's judgement.” Al had drawn himself up, almost as if ready to make a proper fist-fight of it. “I'm going to tell Penny about this. I think we have to.”

Some fights were just not meant to be won. “OK.”

Al held Ed's gaze, clearly expecting more. When there wasn't, he asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Get back and find out if anyone's found anything, go find something if they haven't.”

“Good plan.” He managed a smile that didn't reach past the sides of his mouth. “We'll let you know if we find anything.”

“Be careful. Al, I mean it. Both of you need to be careful.”

“I know, Brother. I'm the cautious one, remember.”

And all Ed could think of was Al going off to Tucker to learn about the Stone, Al stowing away on a plane to another universe, Al who'd burned himself up to bring Ed back to life.

“You OK?” Winry asked when Al and Noah were gone. She shifted to put an arm around his shoulders.

He leaned into her touch. “I should be going with him. Tearing that mansion apart to find out what's hiding in there.”

“I was sort of wondering why you aren't.”

“Because I've got to play by the rules. And because I don't think I'm going to find answers there.”

“You mean, you don't think you'd find this . . . other Edward there.”

“Yeah.”

“Why not?”

If he was honest, it was probably more a desperate hope that the homunculus was a million miles away and still running. “Because I don't think whatever Euler or whoever was working on was about him.”

“OK, I'm repeating myself but – why not?”

“Because if they fed him Stone fragments, where did they get them? If they found him, how did they know what he was? I've read these guys' records, they _weren't_ the kind of alchemists who were involved in Stone research. And Euler wasn't ever Military, no way was he involved in Lab Five or anything like that.”

“I guess that does make it sound unlikely.” She hugged him closer, putting her head against his. “Are you OK with Al? You guys seem pretty strained with each other lately.”

Ed struggled with the lead weights piling up in his conscience. “I should be looking out for him. He shouldn't be being pulled back into this kind of shit but if he is, I should be there for him and – I can't be because of some stupid rules and orders and a load of crap I never used to care about –”

“But that you have to now,” Winry completed when he didn't.

“Yeah. Fucking dumb, isn't it?”

“Yeah.” She kissed him.

He kissed her back and while it lasted, that was all that mattered.

Conscience pricked him as soon as the brain chemicals plateaued. “Urgh. I should get going. Can't keep the Captain waiting any longer.”

They disentangled themselves. “I can't believe Mustang sent Hawkeye to look after you. I mean, I'm glad he did but doesn't he need her right now?”

“Probably. I think he's afraid that the homunculus will come after me.”

“Oh. You think he will?”

“I . . . don't know.” Of course he would. He'd tried to kill Ed and frankly, Ed found it hard to blame him for that. “Like I said, I think Mustang thinks so, so I get Hawkeye watching my back again. She's good at it.”

“I'll bet.” Winry let him haul her up from the sofa. “Is there anything I can do to help? I feel pretty dumb sitting around the house when you guys are all out trying to sort this out.”

“No.” It came out far too quickly and he knew how it sounded but the sheer horror of imagining her getting caught in the middle of some stupid fight with mad alchemists and a homunculus was too much to bear. “No, it's OK. I'd . . . you've got stuff to do, things you wanted to do for the house and – crap, Winry, I'm sorry I'm not helping – as soon as this is all over –”

“I know.” She gripped his shoulder and that was suddenly the most important thing in the world. “I know you will Ed.”

 

* * *

 

“You're worried about him.” It wasn't a question. When Noah sat next to him in the back of the taxi and murmured it, she was not asking, she was telling. Repeating his own emotion back at him because, well, he'd never been able to keep things from showing on his face when he hadn't had a face so how the hell was he supposed to now?

“If I'm not going to be able to protect him, I wish he'd stop trying to protect me!” Al half-growled, voice catching, “I can help!”

“He knows that.”

“Oh, he knows it – he just wants to put me in a box somewhere where no one can get at me in any way and I can't do anything ever!”

All right, so that was not really true. But damnit, yesterday Ed was recovering from a bar fight and a murder attempt, today he had just escaped being killed by a mad homunculus! That kept running around in Al's head, the absurdity and the fear rotating like some out-of-control weathercock. They were supposed to have left that kind of life-or-death madness behind yet here they were again – except it wasn't 'they', it was Ed, stuck alone in the middle of it all!

“He's not on his own,” Noah said, managing to read his mind, lost powers or not, “And he doesn't want to lock you away. That's the last thing he wants.”

Which he knew. Of course he knew that. He was just – “Why am I so damn angry with him? He's dealing with all this crazy stuff and I just seem to want to hit him for being an idiot every time we see each other!” Al thumped the seat for emphasis. “Which is stupid! How am I going to be able to help him if I'm acting like a toddler having a tantrum?”

The taxi rattled around a sharp turn and out into some light traffic. Noah took her time replying, waiting until the driver had slalomed his way around the other vehicles. “When we were in Risenbool . . . you told me you felt a little envious of Ed being out having adventures without you. I think it might be part of that. You have the chance to be part of an 'adventure' and Ed doesn't want you to be.”

“I don't think that says very good things about me.”

“You're also worried about him. Which does.”

“You wanna go right up to the door or just to the gate?” the driver asked around the tobacco he was chewing, turning his head so far around that Al was certain he was no longer even remotely paying attention to where they were going.

“The gate's fine,” he said quickly so that they didn't die because he'd kept the man waiting, “Thank you. And thank _you_ ,” he added emphatically to Noah.

He wasn't sure he felt any better though.

 

* * *

 

Ed was pretty sure he was feeling worse the longer the day went on. He hugged the car door, watching the city roll by without actually seeing any of it. On the other side, Hawkeye sat straight and composed, her hands loose in her lap. He didn't doubt she could draw her pistol in a split-second at the first sign of danger. In the driver's seat, Breda was humming under his breath, meandering through a mixture of parts of different tunes that did not quite fit together.

Which sounded an awful lot like the inside of Ed's head as he turned the events of the last few days over and over again.

They seemed to have so little actual evidence. They had plenty of _clues_ and lots of _suspicions_ but when you got down to it – what did they have? Three dead bodies – or however many there really were, killed with alchemy. Two dead bodies killed by a bomb after trying to kill two more alchemists with alchemy and guns. One murderer/alchemist in a cloak. One more alchemist in a cloak responsible for a murder of someone they thought was the _other_ murderer in a cloak. One homunculus-man from another universe. Everything else was – unproven. They didn't know for sure if it was connected to that damn mining group and if it was, what that was all about. They didn't know for sure if it was anything to do with Bradleyists because all they had was hearsay that Greta Orenco had been one.

There was Fiat's theory about it being a way of killing alchemists who'd disgraced the old order but Ed kept coming back to what Breda had said about it being a dumb way of running a killing spree. There was . . . Edward. Yet that just raised a whole heap more questions and –

Breda spoke up suddenly. “That wall. The one in the alley. Could the homunculus have knocked it over?”

“He's probably strong enough to have,” Ed ventured after wrenching his mind sideways enough to think about it, “Yeah, I guess he could have. Why?”

“Just thinking. It'd make a pretty good murder weapon, if you could control it.”

“The homunculus was showing an ability to perform alchemy.” Hawkeye looked thoughtful.

“Yes, but not like that.” Ed waved a hand as if that alone would clarify what he meant. “Look, the alchemy on display at the murder scenes was very clean and precise. What the homunculus was doing – messy, wild. Remember Scar? He was instinctively performing deconstruction but he couldn't transmute worth a damn. Same with this guy. From what I saw,” he added, to avoid having to eat his foot later. It was _just_ possible he might turn out to be wrong . . .

“We shouldn't discount it.”

“There's not a lot we can discount right now,” Breda grumbled, “I still say Colonel Fiat's theory doesn't make sense. And here's another question – why'd they attack you, Major?”

“What d'you mean?” Ed glanced at Hawkeye then back at Breda.

“Only that, sure, you're going to be on the black list for any parts of the old order still standing but if we've gotten anywhere near the truth with the current theories, this lot were killing off 'disgraced' State Alchemists or they were killing each other. So what the hell were they doing going after you?”

“Perhaps they thought he'd found something in the group's notes.”

“It's a nice idea, Captain, but he didn't. Right?”

“Right,” Ed agreed faintly, the wheels in his mind beginning to turn in the same direction.

“So why would they think he had? Especially if – well, putting secret plans in their notes might make sense if they weren't in a whole mansion full of alchemists.”

“I think I see what you're building to here,” Hawkeye said.

“I figured maybe that Michael guy was the target but he wasn't ever anything to do with the State and he only just became an Indie. So he doesn't fit either.”

“And it would seem that the victims and at least two of the perpetrators have more in common than Ed or Michael do with the victims.”

“Exactly. So I just wonder – what if they were going after Ed because of . . . look, I don't know if you really want to talk about this, boss, but the homunculus . . . the General said he looked . . .”

“Like me.” Ed pinched the bridge of his nose, a bout of faint nausea lumbering in on top of the rest of his aches and injuries. “You're saying that . . . that this isn't about one part of Euler's group killing off the rest, it's about the other – about this homunculus killing them off as a whole and attacking me was . . . self-defence.”

“That's about the size of it. What d'you think, Captain?”

“It is plausible, I suppose. They might even have hired Orenco as protection.”

“But I told you, he probably can't do alchemy well enough to – but we know he's working with another alchemist who's clearly . . . shit.”

“Ed?”

“He was there.” Ed closed his eyes and pictured the flash of gold, the shape he'd half-seen as he ran down the unfinished street. “I saw him right before Orenco blew herself up. I didn't realise that's what it was but he was _there_. Shit.”

The car rumbled on through the Corn Market district, the brightly-coloured awnings flickering dizzyingly past. Breda was taking them the long way around, either to check for pursuit or to give them all time to think.

Hawkeye asked the obvious question. “Why would they assume it was Ed? Even if they had an eye-witness, I can't believe the . . . person we saw last night could really be mistaken for the Fullmetal Alchemist.”

“He was in the south that the same time as the murders, just like Euler,” Breda pointed out.

“I was in South City. I don't think the times match up as well as Euler but maybe they thought – the murders in Central started about the time I arrived too. But this is us guessing again! We have fuck all evidence and fuck all witnesses because they keep dying or getting killed and if all we've got is a list of people who were in the south at the time of the murders then – hell, even Michael was! And he got to Central on the same train I did so –”

The flippant retort died in Ed's mouth, which dropped open. He gaped at Hawkeye. “No.”

“He was alone with Orenco and Lohner right before they died,” she said, “And you were going towards his hotel when you were attacked – would that have been anywhere near where the first few murders were committed?”

“I don't know. He didn't have one booked when he got here. He'd have probably had to have gone somewhere cheap . . . shit. No, it can't be. He's . . . why the hell would he . . .”

“Perhaps we need to ask him that.”

Breda put his foot down.

 

* * *

 

“Ah, General? I've brought him like you asked.” Pushing his glasses up his nose, Fuery held the door for Michael Dorian, who came in nervously, juggling his coat and suitcase. Mustang could not help but notice the pair of gauntlets hanging from the young man's belt.

“Come in, take a seat.” He waved lazily with his right hand, not lifting his left from where it rested below the level of his desk. “Thank you Sergeant, that will be all.”

Michael slunk up to the offered chair with much sheepishness before sitting as if expecting a bear trap under the cushion. It took him a couple of goes to get his coat to lie on his case and when he looked up at Mustang, it was with a flush of embarrassment.

“Getting ready to leave us?” Mustang asked lightly.

“Oh, ah, well – I'm sorry, I'm just not sure I feel particularly safe here after last night. And, well, ah, I don't suppose I'm really in any danger after all so I was going to ask if I might go to the League mansion, if that was all right.”

“Are you sure you're not in any danger?”

Michael's face was a picture of puzzlement. “Well, surely – after that creature – well, it went for Edw – ah, the Fullmetal – um, Major Elric, didn't it? The attack must have been on him, so . . . I just feel a little . . . my apologies, sir, I don't mean to be rude.”

“I'm sure you don't. I quite understand. This place isn't as secure as it looks, clearly. It's understandable that you'd be unsettled by what happened last night. That's what I wanted to talk to you about, actually.”

“Oh. I see. I have talked to, ah . . . Lieutenant Ross? Yes, I already talked to her about that. Was there something wrong with what I said? I tried to give her as much detail as I could but it all happened so fast.”

“It did. You certainly reacted very fast.”

“Well, Ed was in danger and I thought – I was close enough to help so I . . . did,” he finished, gaze lowered modestly. His right hand dropped level with his waistcoat pocket, his thumb hooking inside.

“I'm grateful you did, obviously. Things would get pretty dull around here without Fullmetal.” Mustang allowed himself a smirk at that. “As a soldier, I can only admire your ruthlessness.”

The kid's eyes flicked up. “My . . . ?”

“Carving an array on to your enemy's skin . . . _very_ ruthless.”

“I . . . didn't have a lot of time to think about what I was doing. Obviously . . . I know it's . . . edging into taboo territory but that thing was so fast I . . . think I was thinking that if I didn't do that, it might be able to get away from whatever I did.”

“Exactly. Like I said, I admire what you did.”

He let that hang between them for a few long heartbeats. Michael did not blink.

“Why did you choose that particular array?” Mustang asked, just the right side of casual.

Michael hesitated. Noticeably. That could be perfectly innocent, the time needed to work out an honest answer. Could be. “It was the first thing that came to mind,” he said and Mustang was fairly sure that _was_ an honest answer.

“That's interesting.”

“Is it?”

Which, as every soldier knew, was exactly the wrong response when an officer said they found something interesting.

“Very much so. If you know where it comes from and who developed it.”

“Oh?” Very non-committal. Very innocently uncomprehending. Yet Mustang could not help but notice a new tension in his posture.

“I suppose I have an advantage there. When I first became the Flame Alchemist, I ransacked the State Archives for work on fire alchemy, air manipulation, anything I might use to hone my skills. You know what it's like, I'm sure. Wanting to know everything there is to know about your particular field and desperate to find avenues you might not have thought of exploring. I've probably forgotten most of it now, all the things that I couldn't integrate into my own techniques. I'm not sure I'd have remembered that array if I'd seen it a couple of weeks ago. But it's funny how memory works. How it gets sparked by coincidences. I was thinking about her just the other day and I suppose that helped jog the recollection.”

“Her?” The tension was is Michael's voice now, no longer so well hidden.

Mustang flipped over the photograph lying face down on his desk and reached over to show him. “This is one of those pieces of history Fullmetal kicks up like road-dust with every investigation. Seven infamous State Alchemists, fifty or so years back when they were all young and dangerous. I'd heard of most of them but she's the only one who I ever really knew anything about.” No need to specify who in the photo he was referring to, not with only one woman present.

Michael said nothing.

Turning the picture back around as if to admire it, Mustang sighed wistfully. “The Black Fire Alchemist. Anna Helmont. Last of a great alchemic family, a fire alchemist without peer in her time. Unprincipled and destructive on the battlefield. Do you know why they called her Black Fire?” He left a pause, inviting a response. None came. “She devised a manner of transmuting elements within the human body together with materials in the earth to produce a burning chemical fog that scorched and choked everything in its path. A way of killing an enemy army with their own soldiers. Or ours. I'm not sure she really cared. Which would be why they ended up stripping her of her certification. Though I'm sure I don't need to tell you that.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I'm sorry, am I being too oblique? Let me say it plainly: you used one of Anna Helmont's black fire arrays against the person or creature that attacked this headquarters last night. In the heat of the moment, the first transmutation that came to your mind was a fifty year old process for turning people into poison gas that should not be known to anyone without high-level access to secure Military records. Isn't that right?”

Pale and stiff as any raw recruit called into his commanding officer's office, Michael eye-balled him and clamped his mouth that little bit tighter shut. He was, Mustang reflected, nowhere near as composed in the face of pointed questions as Euler had been.

“Now obviously that isn't what you told Lieutenant Ross. And credit where it's due, the formula you wrote down is a very plausible alternative explanation for the effect. But having one eye doesn't make me totally blind and I was paying very close attention last night. I saw exactly what kind of array you used. Which leaves me asking myself how you could possibly have known it. Given recent events, I also have to wonder about a civilian who uses lethal methods against an enemy with such obvious skill –”

“Are you accusing me of something?” Dorian blurted. He was gripping the arms of his chair now. “I mean, clearly you are. Would you please tell me what?”

“I don't know. That's the problem. The only way I can think that you could have learnt the black fire reaction is if you had been Anna Helmont's apprentice. Under the circumstances, can you understand why I might be concerned about someone who took lessons from _her_ wandering around the city at the same time we're dealing with a string of murders?” 

Michael's chair scrapped backwards. Mustang flew to his feet, left hand raised, fingers poised to snap. The ignition cloth of his glove was dazzling as it caught the light from the window behind him. They faced each other across the desk, statues.

“Is 'Michael Dorian' your real name?”

“Yes. Michael. Dorian.” The kid sucked in a deep breath. “Helmont. The Black Fire Alchemist was my grandmother.”

“She taught you her methods.”

“Some of them.”

Mustang's lips curved. “Look, I get why you wouldn't want to advertise that connection. Running away from the past isn't a crime in my book. However, I need to know right now if you have anything to do with Euler and the rest or with that creature from last night. So. Have you?”

If he had been a gambler, Mustang would have put equal odds on silence or an attempt to dissemble. In that, at least, Michael surprised him. “You're right. I am involved. I'm sorry. I hoped I could just slip away before this caused any more trouble.”

“If you call five bodies in a week 'trouble',” Mustang started to say, only to find himself curiously breathless halfway through. He put a finger to his collar, going to loosen it, realised what he was doing at about the same time his head started to swim. His skin was suddenly cold. Instinctively, he clicked his fingers, aiming for some disorientating show of power, the usual shock tactics he used in close-quarters. But the reaction did little more than raise the hairs on his arm. Gasping, lungs straining, he felt his knees start to buckle.

Looking mournful, Michael Dorian Helmont lifted his left hand and turned it palm-out. The tattooed array there shimmered. “Air manipulation,” he said, “And you're right, I'm afraid. I am skilled with lethal methods. I do want you to know . . . I don't bear you any malice, General. This will actually not be a terrible way to die. In a minute, you'll pass out. Before that you might even start to feel euphoric.” His free hand reached for one of the gauntlets at his waist, slipping into it as Mustang lost his battle with gravity and slumped, struggling to hold on to his desk in an effort to stop from going down completely. He tried to speak and it hurt right down to his chest.

“Please, General. Don't try and fight it.” Michael was pleading with him now, or was that just lack of oxygen distorting his hearing? “It'll all be over soon.”

Something, way off in the distance, went bang. Then, equally distant, Mustang heard Fiat's voice. “Step away from the General and raise your hands!”

Air, glorious air, came rushing back into his lungs. He choked and gurgled and gulped it down. His eyes came back into focus and he saw past Michael to the door, to Fiat looming behind Ross, Bloch and Fuery, all with guns trained on the kid, all looking determined and alert. “I said,” Fiat boomed, “Raise. Your. Hands.”

And Michael did. And the air turned cold again. Bloch fired, Mustang inhaled to shout a warning, both at the same time, both too late. The detonation ripped through the room, splintering furniture and floorboards, flinging soldiers in all directions. Fuery landed against the wall with a crack of breaking bone. Fiat was thrown clean out through the outer office. Ross and Bloch were a tangle of arms and legs, rolling over and over again.

Mustang was protected from the worst of it and tried to take advantage of that but the air currents were moving too fast for him to work with. Michael pirouetted with a dancer's grace, hands still outstretched.

Noise. Heat. A rushing, invisible train. The glancing blow it caught Mustang was enough to smash him aside like paper. A geyser of splintered wood, broken brick and glass shards erupted out of the building, the windows not standing a chance. Gangling limbs whirling, Michael propelled himself through the gap as clean as a shell from a cannon.

The last Mustang saw of him, he was a dark shape against the sky, arcing over the fortress walls and off into the city beyond.


	10. Chimes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eech. I'm sorry this took so long and I can't promise the next chapter will be any sooner - I've been well and truly diverted on to a project I hope to share with you soon.
> 
> But in the meantime, please do enjoy this feature-length chapter. It's time for a few answers . . . and yet more questions!

“It really is very good of you to have come back, my dears. I am feeling quite ostracised this morning.” Penny poured tea with expert precision, handing out the cups to Noah, then Al, then to Parker. The butler/chauffeur gave her a look of studied shock that she proceeded to ignore completely.

Al got the feeling that summed up a lot of their interaction.

“I'm not sure I am ever going to be forgiven for turning poor Marcus over to the police. Especially not now.” She sighed and set the teapot down. “I think I have made a terrible mistake.”

“You did what you thought was right,” he assured her, almost automatically, “It does look like he was involved in everything. And the way he reacted – not running, that makes sense, but he could have seriously hurt the Inspector, even killed her.”

“Oh, I know. I know that. It's just hard to think that way now that he's been . . . murdered too. My goodness, how I hate having to use that word all the time. The whole thing is obscene! And now I have people telling me to my face that I should have kept things nice and quiet and dealt with them as an internal matter. As if people dying is something to be swept under the rug! I cannot blame them though . . . I should probably think the same if I were in their place, watching the police and Military coming marching in. It isn't that great a stretch to suspecting the State Alchemists from having a hand in what's been going on.”

“The Military isn't responsible for Dr Euler's death!” Al protested. Though of course he could not exactly tell Penny who was. “My brother . . . uh –”

“I don't believe for a moment that they were. I can see they would have little to gain from his death. Unless he could incriminate someone of importance in the establishment, I suppose . . .”

Parker made a soft _harumph_ noise.

“What made you suspect Dr Euler?” Noah asked, “I mean, you asked me to watch him and I know there was something in the room-booking ledger, but was there something that made you check there?”

“Oh, that part was all Cassie. No, the rat I smelled was of a different kind – do you recall when we were all together just after hearing about the attack on your brother, Al?”

“Uh, yes? Oh . . .”

“Well, quite apart from Marcus' rather flustered appearance at the time, he said he had just heard the news from George. But I had been asking George where Marcus was a minute or so earlier. He had not spoken to Marcus all afternoon and Marcus was coming from completely the wrong direction to have been talking to him. We would have passed each other on the way from the entrance hall. After all the commotion was over, I rather suppose that it all started to prey on my mind. I went back and asked George about it and he said he knew he'd spoken to Marcus that evening but could not recall when exactly. So I decided to indulge my doubts and asked Cassie if she knew where exactly Marcus had been that afternoon. She produced the ledger which showed that he should have been in with – I suppose we must call him Mr Lohner, and the rest you know.” Penny sipped from her cup and winced. “I second guessed myself all the way through yet I couldn't just sit by and do nothing.”

“Of course not.” Noah leaned forward. “Though I . . . wondered if anyone else had . . . gone missing?”

“There are plenty of people who are staying away at the moment,” Penny said thoughtfully, “It is hard to blame anyone for doing that. I haven't checked to see if anyone in particular is unaccounted for. Parker, do you know of anyone who's unaccounted for?”

“No, m'lady, not 'as such. 'Hyd be 'appy to go and ask George to check.”

“Thank you Parker, that's very kind. However, do hold on just one moment. Noah, are you really suggesting that we need to worry about _more_ people being involved? I know I may still be being dreadfully naïve yet it's hard enough to believe that Marcus and Thom were conspiring to kill people. That anyone else in the League could . . . well.”

Al breathed in through his teeth. “I'm sorry, Penny – right before I met you in that corridor – I didn't have any reason to tell you but . . . I heard Dr Euler talking to someone in the music room. And that means there _must_ be someone else here.”

“Because the Lohney fellow we h'all knew as Lindau would 'ave been dead by then, yes?”

“Indeed, Parker. And there is no telephone in the music room.” Grim-faced, Penny set her cup firmly on its saucer. “Al, thank you for telling me that. I think we need to find out if anyone is missing right away. Parker, please talk to George. I will go up to the office and see if Victoria has been able to do a head-count this morning.”

“Victoria?” Noah got the question in seconds before Al. “What about Cass – Miss Panavia?”

“Oh, I'm afraid Cassie has the day off today. A sick relative, although I did say to her that even if that was just a pretext, I couldn't in all conscience stop her from getting away. She's practically indispensable but she never 'signed on' for any of this chaos.”

Al put his head to the side. “But she was the one who pointed out the evidence?”

“Quite so. Very sharp, our Cassie.”

“Right . . . um. Would you mind if we came to her office with you? Just in case.”

“Well of course that would be fine. But . . .” Penny regarded him dubiously. “In case of what, dear?”

There was no answer that Al could think of that was any kind of reassuring.

 

* * *

 

“You fucking stupid one-eyed moron.”

“Good to see you too, Fullmetal.” Mustang looked up from the map table, against which he was bracing himself with one hand while holding the other pressed against his bruised ribs. “If you're still abusing me, I must be alive.”

“Yeah, clearly. No thanks to your dumb planning. What the hell were you thinking?”

“That I had a hunch about your friend and I needed to test it out with the full back-up of Colonel Fiat's team.”

“And now Fuery's got a broken arm, your office looks like a steamroller went through it and Michael's escaped into the city. Great going, _General_!”

Hawkeye marched smartly past Ed and cast an eye over the big map of Central. She did not look at Mustang. “It was a risky strategy, sir.” Her voice was chilly with disapproval.

“I don't deny it,” he responded, not quite looking at her either, “But it flushed our killer out of hiding and that's the important thing. Now we need to focus on capturing him.” Since they were talking over an orchestra of ringing phones and chattering operators, he assumed the two of them already realised the search was well under way.

Ed stomped up to the table. “So where are we with that?”

“All outward-bound trains have been stopped and roadblocks are in place on the major roads. The police have begun to search along Helmont's last known heading. We've got witnesses who saw him going into the east districts – he was using the rooftops for a while but now seems to have dropped to street level. Fiat's on the ground coordinating the military response. You need to get down there and join him, Fullmetal.”

“No kidding.” Fullmetal wrinkled his nose. “You really think he's murdering people because of his family? Sheska told us on the way up,” he added in answer to Mustang's questioning frown.

“I don't know. I was fully prepared to accept he was just keeping his name to himself because of the murderous connotations. Then he actually tried to murder me and blew up my office.”

“Damnit! If I hadn't left him alone with those two –”

“Then we'd probably have been pulling three bodies out of a collapsed building.”

Ed twisted his aiguillette around his fingers, tight enough to crush his skin white. “He could have got me in the back during the fight if he wanted.”

“And been left to win it on his own? We can discuss his motives when he's locked up.”

“Right. Sure.” He let go and the cord bounced against his jacket. “Where do you need me?”

 

* * *

 

Winry was sure she ought to feeling more satisfied about having found the perfect place to buy workbenches and cabinets. That this had come with a hot tip on the best supplier of machine-shop equipment in the city should have meant the day was off to a roaring start.

Instead, she walked along with only one eye on where she was going and half her brain occupied with a whole host of not-very-nice thoughts. It was hard planning a future when she did not know if big parts of it were going to out-live the day. No, that was stupid. She knew they would. She trusted them to be able to look after themselves, whatever happened. They'd proven that enough times. And yet . . .

And yet it was hard _not_ to worry about it all the same.

She groaned, pressing a hand to her eyes. The worst part of it was not being able to do anything. Rationally, she knew there wasn't anything she _could_ practically do. She still wanted to help. That was just her lot, wasn't it? To want to help the people she loved but stuck at a remove unable to actually do anything about it. She couldn't even rope Sheska into an investigation of her own, not that she had any idea where they could start. It was all completely outside her areas of expertise. Unless you counted first-hand experience of a serial murderer.

Walking through one of the little courtyard squares that dotted the artificers' quarter, she tugged her jacket a little bit tighter around her. All of a sudden, the slight chill in the air felt as cold as a refrigerator.

There were two more things on the list for the morning: set up an appointment to see about the banking arrangements and meet one of the doctors from the hospital to talk about formally signing on as a working auto-mail mechanic in Central. The second of those would double as lunch, setting her up for a long afternoon phoning suppliers. Plus, she needed to think about actual furniture. Like chairs. Or a bed. Good grief. They were going to need a bed. She should probably have thought about that before the equipment. She _definitely_ should.

“Argh!” she muttered to herself. What the hell did she know about bed-buying? She'd never given them much thought before, not unless it was a bed for a patient and the requirements there were completely different, or at least quite different. She'd never asked Ed what he wanted from a bed and since she mostly stayed up working until she was too exhausted to move, what she wanted from a bed was basically something she would not slide out of in the night. Who had time to think about what kind of bed they wanted anyway? Obviously people must do. Bed makers presumably. People who actually cared about what their living spaces looked like. People who spent a lot of time in bed.

Winry wondered if Gracia would have any ideas and felt a pang of guilt at relying on the older woman's help so much. She had been so kind to her – to them all – and Winry was not entirely sure that she had done much to earn that kindness. It was not as if she'd been there to help deliver Elisia or to bring Maes Hughes' murderers to justice. Her own attempts to investigate his death seemed hopelessly naïve in hindsight. Still, she was very grateful to have the support.

A gaggle of schoolgirls in yellow hats came noisily across her path as she emerged on to a wider street. She stopped and waited for them to pass, looking idly over their heads at the buildings opposite and thinking that after a couple of years in Rush Valley, Central seemed to have been built with giants in mind instead of ordinary people –

Her blood ran cold.

In the dark gap between two hulking town houses, someone stood looking straight back at her. Someone with pale skin and golden hair, the rest of their shape made fuzzy by the shadows, staring so intently that she could almost physically feel it –

The schoolgirls' teacher came past, momentarily cutting across Winry's line of sight. When she could see across the street again, the figure in the shadows was gone.

 

* * *

 

“Over here, Major Elric!”

Fiat beckoned him over as soon as the staff car had come to a stop. Getting out, Ed jogged across to where the colonel stood peering over the shoulder of a radio operator. Soldiers and police hurried around them, spreading out into the surrounding streets. “You found him yet?” Ed asked.

“We've been tracing his movements through the city. He's keeping to street level as far as we can tell, not trying to fly his way out.” There was a trace of disbelief in Fiat's voice, like he was having a hard time believing that was a real possibility. “We've got dogs on his trail.”

“At least you're chasing the right person this time.”

The Colonel did not rise to the sarcasm. “Dr Euler was involved in something. His whole group is. When we catch Mr Helmont, we'll find out what exactly that is.”

“You're sure of that, huh?”

“Quietly confident, Major. Quietly confident.”

Arguing would have been pointless so Ed let it drop. Especially as he didn't exactly disagree. Though he did feel like pointing out that Michael was clearly not the only person they had to worry about, given his obvious innocence of killing Euler. But Ed was in no hurry to bring up the subject of his doppelgänger with Fiat, so instead he asked, “Has he hurt anyone? Michael, going through the city?”

“Apparently not. Running, not fighting. Smart fellow. We've had a few incidents of him using his alchemy to bypass obstacles. Nothing more violent. Yet. Can you give us any insight into where he might be headed?”

“How the hell should I know?” Ed growled.

“You spent some time with him, yes?”

“Doesn't mean I know anything about him. Clearly. You think I'd have kept it quiet if I'd known he was the murderer?”

From the way he hesitated before responding, it was pretty damn obvious that Fiat hadn't yet made up his mind. “I only meant to ask whether he had mentioned anything during your conversations that might give us a lead. Or anything you got the impression he was trying to keep on the QT.”

“There's . . . no, there's nothing. We didn't talk about much beyond alchemy. We might have done if – I can't help there.”

“Not to worry, Major. I mostly want you in the field as our ace in the hole if it comes to an open engagement.”

The radio operator jerked and turned up the volume on his loudspeaker. _“ – squad four, repeat: we've got him heading down one of the mason passages!”_ the radio squawked, _“Looks like he's going straight for a dead-end! We can corner him!”_

“Give your exact position, squad four!” Fiat thundered, grabbing the microphone, “And do not engage without back-up!” He half-turned while the soldier on the other end shouted out street names for the operator to write down. “Major Elric –”

“On my way.” Ed snatched the paper from the operator and headed back to the car at a run.

 

* * *

 

“Are you worried about Miss Panavia?” Noah asked.

She and Al were standing off to the side while Penny tore her way through the papers on the secretary's desk. Al bit his lip before answering. “I . . . don’t know. I’m . . . there’s something odd about what she found in the ledger.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s . . . doesn’t it seem a bit weird to you?” he asked, “From what Ed and Penny said, Euler’s name got added in without anyone knowing some time that afternoon. As an alibi for him and Lohner. Right? To make it look like they had a good reason to be missing at the time of the attack on Ed.”

“It seems like a good idea.”

“Yeah, it is. But . . . if they snuck it in there while Cassie wasn’t around, wouldn’t that have looked more suspicious? There are so many people in this place and so many rooms, the secretary’s job seems to half be about making sure everyone goes where they need to go. Why not just ask her outright to book them a room?”

“Maybe they didn’t want anyone to remember they were going to be in the same place,” she hazarded, “In case . . . but then it wouldn’t have been good evidence that they were in a meeting, would it?”

“Exactly. By sneaking it in, it just looks more suspicious.”

“Perhaps they just couldn’t find her. They can’t have had long to put it in before they went after Ed.”

“Then why go to effort of tampering with the ledger? That must have taken time and a risk – this office is pretty central and there must be people in and out all the time.” As if to demonstrate his point, a sandy-haired man poked his head around the door, mouth opening in a question. He saw Penny, exchanged a glance with the hovering Victoria and immediately retreated. “It’s just,” Al went on, “the more I think about it . . . it feels like the only thing that booking could have done is incriminate Euler.”

“You think someone added it afterwards to make sure he got arrested?”

“I think it’s possible. People must be checking that ledger all the time. Someone was bound to see the entry eventually.”

Noah had to admit that it was a good point. If there really was someone still in the mansion who was part of this conspiracy – whatever it was really after – then getting everyone looking at Euler might really have been in their interests. Only . . . why would they try to expose him if they were working together? That made no sense. She was about to say as much when Penny came to the end of her search.

“Well, that seems to be the entirety of the library staff in evidence. Have you found any gaps anywhere else, Victoria?”

The temporary secretary, a round, nervous-looking lady, bobbed uncertainly. “Everyone seems to be accounted for in the register, your Ladyship. Oh, except Mr Clier. He didn’t sign it this morning. He usually does.”

“Oh. That’s strange. At least, I suppose it is.”

Al's ears almost visibly pricked up. “You don't sound very sure.”

“I’m rather afraid I’ve never actually met Mr Clier. He’s something of a recluse.”

“Ah. OK. But apart from him, there's no one missing?”

“N-not exactly,” Victoria said, “I mean, maybe not in the way you mean. Or . . .there are plenty of members who we don't know where they are but they've also not been here for at least a couple of weeks. I think . . . I think we know where most of the people who've been here in the past few days are. Or where they've told us they are.”

“Like Cassie.”

Penny bristled. “My dear, you cannot possibly think that she has anything to do with all this! Cassie isn't even an alchemist for heaven's sake!”

“She's not?”

“You sound so surprised! You surely didn't think one had to be an alchemist to work here? Why, I know plenty of alchemists without half the organisational genius of Cassie Panavia!”

“No, it's not . . . it's not that. I just –” Al's brow furrowed. He looked like he was trying to remember something. “I just thought . . . I don't know why but I assumed she was.”

Pushing her hands into her sleeves, Noah drifted closed to the desk with half an idea to take a look over Penny's shoulder at whatever list of names she had been reading. “So you don’t know if we should be worried that Mr Clier did not come here today?”

“Oh, no, miss,” Victoria said quickly, “Mr Clier’s staying here. People sign this if they go out as well as when they come here.”

“We like to know who’s in the building in case it catches fire,” Penny added, “Which is always something of a worry with a mansion full of alchemists.”

“So Mr Clier usually goes out every day and didn’t today?”

“Yes. Or . . . I suppose so.” Victoria flipped the register open and turned the pages this way and that. “Yes, he signed back in last – oh. I’m sorry, he didn’t. He _didn’t_ sign back in last night. Which is definitely unusual, he always has before. Here, your ladyship.”

“That is worrying timing.” Penny smoothed the page flat, running her finger down a column in which Mr Clier’s name noticeably did not appear. “Be a dear and dig out the spare key for room thirty-two, please.”

“Y-yes your ladyship.”

“You're going to go and open up his room?” Al moved towards her. “Now?”

“I hope I am being paranoid but when someone who is regular as clockwork suddenly changes their routine the same night that Marcus is killed by a . . . an even more rogue alchemist that _he_ apparently was, well, I am not prepared to leave this up to chance. So yes, Al. I am going to open up his room. With luck, I will find him inside, nursing a terrible hangover and this will all be a harmless administrative error.”

“Or he could be . . . I'm not sure what but I should definitely come with you.”

“I would most definitely appreciate the back-up. Especially as I'm not at all sure what I would do with a man with a hangover.” The joke came out quivering. Penny was very, very worried and there was no one there who blamed her for it.

When she got up to go and see what was taking Victoria so long, Noah turned the register pages back to yesterday and the day before. There was Mr Clier's name and signature. Just 'Mr Clier', no sign of a first name. Written in capitals, the signature next to it just a squiggle. Not all that different from any dozen of the other entries.

Still, looking at in on the page, Noah got the nagging sense that it was wrong. A lie or –

She picked up a pencil and a scrap of notepaper. Al was distracted by the noises coming from the other end of the office, something about it being very unlike Cassie to file a key in the wrong place, so she was left to her own devices for a few moments. With slightly more painstaking precision than was necessary, she wrote out 'CLIER'. Think like an alchemist, she told herself. Where every word had a double or triple meaning and codes wrapped around meaning as iron bars around a prisoner.

Or –

Or maybe –

“Oh . . . no.”

 

* * *

 

“Where is he?”

“Down there, sir!” The lieutenant in charge of the squad scrambled to salute and point at the same time. “It's a dead-end and he definitely didn't fly out. I've got men up on the surrounding buildings and we haven't heard anything from the spotter balloons.”

Ed charged past him and his men, tossing his jacket back into the car. “Stay behind me and don't fucking shoot anyone. Got it?”

“Y-yes sir.”

“And stop that damn dog barking! Not that he won't have guessed we're coming by now. Right.” He squared his shoulders. “Let's go.”

The buildings quickly closed in around them. In the older part of the city, that meant the roofs getting close enough together to cut out a big chunk of the daylight. The street curved gently, enough to obscure the end for a good thirty seconds. More than enough time for Ed to start to feel sick with anticipation. He made a conscious effort to slow his breathing, keeping his limbs loose and his mind clear. The men behind him were a dead-weight ready to drop on to his conscience. They were his responsibility and whatever he did, he needed to protect them. Damn. Was this how Mustang felt all the time?

And there was the end of the road, an unremarkable and unbroken brick wall. With fuck-all in front of it.

The lieutenant swore, disbelievingly. “He was in here, sir!”

Without replying, Ed sprinted forward. “Shit.” There was a manhole cover set into the ground, a metre or so from the wall. He knelt and touched the rim, confirming his first suspicion that the sludge stuck around the edge had been disturbed and recently. “The sewers. He's gone underground.”

“We'll never catch him now!”

“Don't be dumb! He's only a few minutes ahead!” Ed clapped and the metal melted away to reveal a ladder leading down into blackness. “Get some lights,” he ordered, taking out the electric torch he was very grateful Breda had given him on the way out of Headquarters, “and meet me down there.”

Not waiting to see if the lieutenant even tried to protest, he jumped down on to the ladder and lowered himself into the dark.

 

* * *

 

He was following her. Creeping fingers of paranoia chased Winry through the city, every shadow and half-glimpsed shape making her jump. But she knew, just _knew_ it wasn't just her imagination. After that first glimpse of the golden-haired figure watching her, she’d begun looking over her shoulder and staring too long into the openings she passed, just to be sure. And now five, maybe six times she'd seen him again. Brief as blinking each time but she trusted her senses. He _was_ following her.

She knew who it was. Or knew who she figured it was. Given that Ed would not have any reason to be lurking in the shadows, there was really only one option. What she did with that conclusion, however . . .

Why would Ed's doppelgänger be interested in her? Dumb question, she supposed, having read enough railway station novels to have an idea what villains did with their enemies' loved ones. Not that she could imagine any version of Ed with a moustache to twirl. He barely managed to grow stubble and even then it was so fair it hardly showed up. That was not a very useful line of thought yet her brain insisted on following it and she realised she was probably panicking, ever so slightly.

No. She was going to be rational about the situation. Firstly, none of them actually knew what the deal was with this other-world-Ed-turned-homunculus. Sure, he'd attacked Ed but who was to say why? Winry had met two homunculi in her life and both of them hadn't seemed all there – or, well, she'd not stuck around long enough to get to know the thing that had been supposed to be Trisha Elric but Wrath had been very strange and definitely not entirely OK in the head. Not always in a bad way, true, but she'd seen what the other homunculi had done to him, warping him from a nice if slightly demented little boy into a homicidal maniac. So . . . what? That wouldn't matter much if her stalker meant her harm, would it? Wrath had been impossible to talk down.

She should go and find someone to help. Who? The nearest person in the city was probably Gracia and there was no way Winry could drag her into something dangerous. She could find a phone and try to call Ed or General Mustang, or even the League and Al. She _should_ do that. Only that would mean stopping and her instincts told her that was a bad idea. Keeping moving seemed very much the safer option.

She could walk straight up to the Military HQ and dare him to attack her there –

Oh.

Yeah, not such a smart idea after all. If she had only thought to bring a wrench with her – but no, that was even dumber. She wasn't an Elric or a soldier. Experience laying out drunken meat-heads in Rush Valley bars was not martial arts training. An inhumanly strong and alchemy-powered monster was not something she could deal with on her own. If he chose to attack her, there was not going to be a lot she could do about it. Which chilled her right down to the bone marrow.

Then she started to use her brain and realised that if the other Ed had been following her for any amount of time, he had had plenty of opportunity to attack her. And he hadn't. Where that line of thought led nearly brought her to a screeching halt in the middle of the pavement.

Winry replayed the last hour or so in her mind. This person – whoever or whatever he was – had been following her effortlessly as she tried to lose him. In all likelihood he had been doing it a while before she'd first spotted him. And most of the time, she wasn't spotting him. Couldn't spot him. Whichever way around that sentence made sense. The point was, not only was there every possibility that he could have snuck up on her earlier and done any number of things before she realised what was happening, he was good enough at stalking to go unseen most of the time. So why not all of the time?

There he was again. Across the street, watching from shadow of a shop awning. Not hiding from her. He was making _sure_ she saw him. Which surely was what he had been doing all along.

Leaving just the truly gargantuan question of _why_ –

The other Ed deliberately turned away and walked around the corner.

Oh.

For a long moment, Winry hesitated, mentally cataloguing all the reasons it would be very, very stupid to follow him. Then, because apparently Elric-ness was infectious, she did it anyway.

 

* * *

 

Weirdly, Al was fighting the urge to tip-toe along the corridor to 'Mr Clier's' room. It was absurd, especially given that Penny's shoes were practically striking sparks from the floor as she double-timed it towards the offending door. It was just that the closer they got, the tighter a fist of dread was closing around his heart.

He could not stop seeing that piece of paper. Noah's slightly wobbling handwriting picking out two sets of the same letters. CLIER. And beneath that –

ELRIC.

He would have kicked himself if he could have spared the time. How had he not seen that at once? Well, obviously because he had not been looking for it. It was such a dumb, childish trick that it had sailed straight past. All this time, Edward March had been right –

No. No, he could not waste effort beating himself up about that. It was time to focus on what was in front of him, which at the moment was the ramrod back of the de-facto head of the LIA. Penny seemed more inclined to transmute the door into matchsticks than use the spare key Parker had eventually produced from his own private set. Concern for Cassie's well-being had transformed into righteous fury at the suggestion that she was complicit in a deception. Whether Penny was angry at that itself or just the accusation was impossible to say.

They arrived outside the door to room thirty-two and did their best to all crowd around it at once. “Maybe I should –” Al began.

“I'll go h'in first, m'lady,” Parker said, pushing forward.

“Um,” Noah managed.

“ _I_ shall be going in first.” The finality in Penny's voice silenced all objections. She knocked firmly on the door, the noise more than loud enough to wake anyone who had legitimately overslept. “Mr Clier?” she called, “Are you in?” There was no answer to that, or to the second knock. “Right then.”

Everyone moved that bit closer as she unlocked the door and pushed it open. Al was sure he was not the only one to feel mildly disappointed when all they saw was an ordinary empty room. Just a large, fairly plain bedroom, a desk at the window, a dresser, a bed with disordered sheets – no deadly arrays chalked on the floor or blood daubed on the walls.

That said, there was another door inside.

“Where does that go?” Al asked, taking a couple of steps towards it.

Penny, already over by the bed, glanced his way. “To the dressing room. Just a mirror and a sink, really. Hmm. Tell me, my dear, does anything seem especially wrong with the scene in front of us?” She gestured over the sheets, at the desk and the chair in before it.

Al frowned then tensed. “No books. No papers. Not even any pens.”

“Maybe 'e just did h'all his work downstairs?” Parker suggested.

“But if he was out all the time, he must have been working somewhere else,” Noah pointed out, “And wouldn't he have had to keep his notes here?”

“I suppose he could simply have taken everything with him, which is, I admit, suggestive.” Penny worked her way around the bed and drew a finger along the desk, inspecting it for dust. Her face remained thunderous.

Gripping the doorknob, Al inwardly braced himself. If the bedroom was anything to go by, there really would be nothing in it except a sink and a mirror. That would mean absolutely nothing to go on as far as evidence went but experience told him that was infinitely preferable to the great many horrible alternatives he could all-too-easily imagine. Better to get it over with quickly.

He yanked the dressing room door open. A towering suit of armour glared back at him, all angles and aged steel. There was nothing but blackness behind the visor and yet, for a second, Al thought he could see _something_ in there.

Then the armour raised a fist.

 

* * *

 

The sewers in Central were as grand as Ed would have expected, if he had ever given them a seconds' thought. The stretch he was charging through was wide enough to have its own inspection walkway, safely raised to the side of the main channel. That was a relief. Even better, it was just damp enough that Michael had left a line of perfect footprints behind him.

Hammering boots chased Ed, easily a dozen metres behind him as he sped on ahead. He should probably have waited for the soldiers to catch up but Mustang could chew him out for that later if he wanted. Better to be the one to lay hands on Michael first. Anyone who could take down multiple State Alchemists would be able to make mince-meat out of ordinary grunts. And that was without assuming that the other Edward didn't show up or the cloak-wearing alchemist. It wasn't like nuts like those ever formed orderly queues or politely lined up to get punched.

He swung his torch about as the tunnel joined a couple of others, following the footprints to the point where they went right round a blind corner. Taking it carefully so that he stood less of a chance of getting ambushed, he eased around the bend and into an even wider stretch of sewer. A main channel, he assumed, fed by the other tunnels. There were walkways on both sides and from what he could see in his torch-beam, openings and alcoves at regular intervals all the way along.

The footprints stopped a few paces in, ending in a patch of confused scuffing.

Ed ran up to the end of the trail, casting about to try and work out what could have happened. Had Michael jumped further on or fallen –

_Think about who you're dealing with, dummy!_

Twisting around, he aimed his torch across the channel, trying to peer into every possible hiding place, trying to see footprints on the other side. He raced on down the sewer, only half-hearing the soldiers speed up, trying to catch him. “Major!” the lieutenant shouted, happily giving away any element of surprise that still remained. He appeared at the bend, raising a hand.

Ed opened his mouth to curse the idiot for being so loud.

A yellow flare in the shadows was all the warning either of them got before a high-pressure blast sliced across the tunnel and into the roof. With a horrifying scream of tearing masonry, the whole lot came crashing down. Ed threw himself flat, fragments of stone pelting his back. When it was over, when he was sure it was safe to get up, he found the way back totally cut off. His auto-mail fingers ground against one another. Had the lieutenant . . . ? _Shit, shit, shit_. He hadn't even asked the man's name –

He aimed his torch like a sword. On the other side of the sewer, Michael blinked, his face a mask of regret.

 

* * *

 

The other Ed walked damn fast and made so many turns that Winry nearly lost him at least a dozen times. She just about managed to keep up though and it got easier as he led her away from streets with a lot of people on them. Thinking about that too hard put iron bands around her gut, so she resolved not to. Instead, she thought about what she could see of the other Ed.

He did not move like Ed. Ed moved pretty easily for a man with massive lumps of metal attached to him but there was still a heaviness to his stride that his doppelgänger lacked. He was _springy_ in a way that was much more like Al, if anyone. If not for the face, she wouldn't have made any connection just based on build or physique. It made sense. Someone who'd never lost limbs, never tried human transmutation or gotten into so many life-and-death fights, well they would just not be the Ed she knew, would they?

Weird. There were so many different ways a life could have gone. It was easy to think about that in abstract, to say 'oh I wish I'd done that instead of this.' You never expected to actually meet the you that _had_ done that. Ed and Al had never mentioned meeting another version of her in that other world and she had never dared ask but right then, it was impossible not to wonder.

The ground trembled under her feet.

Winry froze, breath catching. It was over almost at once, little more than what you might get if a heavy truck ran past close by. Only there was no truck. Up ahead, the other Ed had stopped as well. His head was on one side, listening, hair dropping falling across his ear. It was not as long as Ed's, shoulder length at most. He turned slowly on the spot, expression distant. Then his eyes came back into focus and of course he was looking straight at her.

Steeling herself, Winry held her ground and looked straight back at him. “H-hi there.”

He did not so much as blink, which put paid to any lingering idea she might have had that he didn't know she had been following him. “Hello.” His accent was completely different from Ed's but the timbre of his voice was almost exactly the same.

That actually freaked her out more than the way he looked. “You . . . you're Edward, right?”

“I am. And you are Winry Rockbell.”

“Y-you know my name?”

“You've been going around town introducing yourself for the past few days.” He gave a smile, thin and cool, that she could never imagine Ed giving in a million years. “And I have very good hearing.”

“You tried to kill Ed!” Dread gave the accusation strength enough to crack her voice. She was imagining how closely he had been following her, how close he must have come to being able to jump Ed any time he wanted, how he must have been toying with all of them –

“Yes,” he agreed simply, “I did. I will again.”

“And, what, you're going to try and use me as bait? Is that what this is about? You want to get at him through me.”

“In a sense. You – you're neutral. To me.” His hand hovered over his chest, two buttons down on his shirt, not quite touching. “I don't know you. There wasn't a 'Winry Rockbell' in my world that I ever knew of. I can look at you and I don't feel . . . anything.”

He made that sound like a good thing, not that she was willing to take his word on anything. Still, he wasn't being openly aggressive or anything. Maybe she could –

“But you care about him,” Edward went on, “For 'Ed'.” He leaned down suddenly, reaching for a manhole cover in the ground in front of him. “So I can give you a message and be pretty sure he'll get it. Tell him that if he wants to find me, I'll be in warehouse eleven at Alber Wharf on the river front.” Plucking the cover out of its hole, he flung it aside as if it were made of cardboard.

The clang made Winry flinch and doubled her urge to get away. But she was damned if she was going to back down to this _person_ who thought they could make her a part of their plot. “You're right, I _do_ care about Ed! So why would I tell him to go anywhere near you, huh?!”

Crouching on the edge of the manhole, Edward stared down into the dark. “Because,” he said as his nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed, “it's not me he'll be coming after.”

And without another word he jumped into the sewer.

 

* * *

 

“OK then . . .” Ed flung his arms wide. “COME ON! This is the part where you tell me your crazy plan? GET ON WITH IT! I'm _really fucking good_ at listening to murderous crazy people rant on about how their brilliant schemes and how they're gonna rule the world, blah, blah, blah. SO WHAT'S THE PLAN, MICHAEL?”

The other alchemist heaved a sigh. He was holding his hands out, arrays primed. “There isn't any plan, Ed. Not from me. There never was.”

“Really?! So, what, you've just been _improvising_? Or can't you help yourself?”

Michael's mouth twitched. “Would you believe that it was self-defence?”

If they'd been anywhere but a stinking sewer, Ed would have taken a deep breath. As it was, he settled for pressing a hand over his eyes and drawing it down his face, careful to only use one in case Michael thought he was going to clap. “OK,” he muttered, “OK. Let's hear it. What the hell does that mean?”

“You know who I am. Who I really am?”

“You're the grandson of a crazy alchemist who murdered a bunch of people. So what?”

“So that's not why my grandmother was feared. She was notorious for her body count but people were _afraid_ of her because she was always working to _improve_ on it. The Black Fire Alchemist gained her reputation by never being satisfied with the reach or power of her reactions. She was always searching for new accelerants and amplifiers. Always creating them where they didn't exist. And her greatest achievement was this.”

Slowly, keeping his other arm rigid, Michael reached around to his waistcoat pocket and tugged out his watch. He held it up, as far as the chain would reach, and let the silver casing catch the torchlight.

“Doesn't look like much, does it?” he said before Ed had a chance to make pretty much the same observation, “Nothing worth killing over. But this is the reason that people think State Alchemists' watches amplify their power. It's the prototype, you see. The reason they made Handley's watch into something more than a badge of office. It's . . .” He flipped the casing open, shut, open again. “Think of it as an alchemic flywheel, storing a little bit of energy every time the owner performs a transmutation. There are over a hundred layered arrays packed into this thing, each one of them looping their charge. Someone holding it can feed that energy back into their reactions, ramping them up far beyond what they could achieve unaided.”

“Like a Philosopher's Stone,” Ed realised, heart sinking.

“I suppose so, if you believe in that sort of thing. But this is real. It works. You've seen it working.”

Things were already clicking into place in Ed's head. “Flying. You use it to amplify the range and power of your air manipulation so you can sustain your flight. All that talk of learning how to best focus the arrays –”

“Oh that was all true. It's still not easy and it took me a long time to get right. But the watch helps a lot.”

Ed scowled at him, wondering if he should believe him. The watch spun slowly, glinting. It looked so very small and unthreatening. But so had Dante and it wasn't as though he could afford not to treat Michael as if he was telling the truth.

“Euler and his friends wanted it then,” Ed guessed, “For the power it would give them. So you killed them before they could take it. Is that right?” A few years ago, he would have made the suggestion in a blaze of anger. Now it just made him feel terribly empty inside.

“I had to. You know what people like that could do with something this powerful? You're a soldier. You know about killing in the name of protecting something bigger.”

Though apparently it still only took a little to push him back into snarling fury. “If you're going to start saying how much we're fucking alike –”

“Alike?” Michael's face twisted. “Edward Elric, we are nothing alike. You have family, friends, dozens of people who care about you, an entire country that thinks you're a hero. All I ever had was my grandmother.” A shuddering sigh escaped around the word.

“You called her crazy,” he said after a moment, “She wasn't. She was evil. There wasn't any madness in it or . . . she just lived to see the world burn. Do you have any idea what it is like to be in the power of someone like that? To be utterly dependant on someone who sees you at best as a lab assistant and at worst . . . a test subject.”

Kimbley's face flashed across Ed's mind, the nearest point of reference he could think of. The man who had turned Al into a bomb, who'd turned dozens of people into bombs just for fun. But even then, even facing people like that, he'd never been entirely helpless. Never the child they took him for. Barry the Chopper had learned that the hard way. Greed had bet on it.

“No,” he said aloud, “Maybe I don't. Is that your excuse? That you had a shit childhood?” He flinched at the cruelty of what he'd just said.

Michael didn't. “I didn't want to kill anyone. I wouldn't have but they wouldn't leave me alone. Don't you get it yet, Ed? They wanted this watch and they would have killed me to get it. I didn't even mean to kill the first one they sent after me. But with the amplification . . . if I'm not careful . . . I've gotten a lot more practise under combat conditions since then.”

“So now you kill them on purpose.”

“To stop them getting this! So they can't use it! You're part of the Military, you've seen what they can do if there's no one to stand up to them! Can't you imagine what they'd do with an amplifier like this? What the old order would do if they got their hands on it?!”

“Then drop it in a lake!” Oh, Ed could imagine all right and the fact Michael hadn't smashed the watch to pieces drove a knife of fury through his body. “Why the fuck do you still have that thing if it's so dangerous?! You didn't have to kill anyone! You –”

In one violent motion, Michaal tore the shirt up from his right side, uncovering a stretch of white skin. Incomprehension more than surprise made Ed stop shouting. Then he realised that the watch chain was still there even though the pocket it should have been attached to had been lifted up and the chain –

Disappeared into Michael's side, merging seamlessly with his skin.

“My grandmother's last gift to me,” he hissed bitterly, “Her legacy. She wanted to make sure it was used, one way or the other. The chain wraps around my spine. And the chain is part of the array. It's a beautiful work of art, a hundred more circles interlinked to the main body. It means I can't break it without breaking the storage patterns and I have no idea what will happen if I do that. My best guess is it'll all destabilise and leave a crater half a kilometre wide. And frankly, to be honest with you . . . I really don't want to die.”

And it wasn't as if Ed was unsympathetic to that, or that he'd somehow missed the pain on Michael's face. It was just that in his hurry to show off how trapped he was, Michael had momentarily let his aim waver, giving Ed exactly the opening he had been waiting for. Finally, he had the space to clap. The calculations were already formed in his head, his hands at waist height, just right to quickly connect. In a second, it would all be over.

Unfortunately, a second was pretty much how long it took the homunculus to surge out of the darkness and lock his arms around Michael's neck.

 

* * *

 

Al shot backwards, a second ahead of the blow that would have knocked his head from his shoulders.

The suit of armour came thundering out of the dressing room like a runaway express and everyone else in the room froze in shock. Whatever they had been expecting, this was surely not it. Even Al was reeling in astonishment, though luckily not quite enough to overwhelm his survival instincts. He slid under the fast but clumsy punches the armour was aiming at him and got in a few testing kicks that did little more than bruise his toes. Then the confined space caught up with him and he knocked into Penny, followed by the bed. The armour seemed to rear up in triumph as he went down, towering above him.

Boy, he'd never really appreciated how intimidating he must have been for all those years before he got his body back.

The sizzle of a transmutation came from by the door and a loop of extruded matter caught around the armour's leg, jerking it to one side, buying Al enough time to slap his hands against the bedstead. Following Noah's example, he sent more ropes out to encircle the metal arms. The armour locked up, still as a statue for a few seconds and Al clapped again, creating a quarterstaff for himself.

Just in time. With a great wrench and the crack of splintering wood, the armour broke free. Al danced sideways and whirled the staff, striking thigh, side, shoulder. Each blow got him a clang for his troubles and not much else. The armour barely seemed to notice. It flailed at him briefly then made straight for the way out. Noah began to transmute the door once more, shaping it into a shield, but she was only halfway done when the armour reached her and she was forced aside before she got a chance to stand up to it.

The armour ploughed straight on across the corridor and through the window opposite.

Al sprinted after it, kicking the remains of the window frame aside and lowering himself through the hole far enough that he could drop to the ground safely. The armour was out on to the mansion's lawn now, moving about as fast as it was possible for something like that to go. At a flat-out run, Al caught up easily – not that he could do much when he got there. A soul anchored to a metal shell was not going to be deterred no matter how many times you hit it with a stick.

There was something odd about the impact of the staff on the armour. It did not make the right sound. A hollow clanging, yes, just not quite hollow enough. Had he got it wrong? If there was not a human in there, what else could –

A fist whistling over his head reminded him that now was not the time to puzzle it out. Jamming the staff into the lawn in an attempt to tangle up its legs, he clapped and dived, offering silent apology to Penny for what he was about to do.

In a great wave of turf, the lawn rose up in front of the armour and formed a giant fist, holding it fast. For about fifteen seconds. If he had been working with rock or stone, he could have sealed the transmutation tight. The well-kept, well-watered earth was another matter entirely. The armour forced its way free of the crumbling matter, wrenching its limbs out one after the other. It turned an empty-helmeted glower on him and he got the strong impression that it had just decided he was getting in its way after all.

“Al! Get back!” Riding a rising wedge of ground, Noah swept towards him, Penny holding on to her while carrying – a plant pot? Al scrambled out of the way, gaining a metre's safe distance while the armour swung ponderously around to face the new distraction. Green light flickered around Penny's hand as she hefted the plant pot and then hurled it at the metal figure with all her might. The pot smashed to fragments against the chest-plate, disgorging a shower of compacted soil and a sudden explosion of roses. Thorn-covered stems and pink blossoms surged and twined across the armour, becoming vines that worked their way into the joints and bound them up.

The armour strained visibly, trying to break free, but the vines had more give than the brittle earth and they held. Al relaxed slightly. He grinned up at Noah as she lowered the transmuted ground back down. “Thanks! That was good timing!”

Noah grinned back, then looked worriedly at the struggling armour.

“Well, we couldn't leave you all alone, could we?” Penny stepped unsteadily down to join Al, dusting off her hands. “My word. I wasn't entirely sure that would work.”

“I'm not sure it will, for long.” Al's staff had been broken in two during the struggle. He picked up the loose piece and weighed it in his hand. “We need to find a better way to keep it still.”

“What exactly is 'it'? I do hope there isn't some poor soul in there we've been bashing about for no good reason . . .”

“You might be surprised . . . but no, I don't think it's a person. I think –”

“Look out!”

Noah's warning came a fraction of a second before Al noticed the dark shapes oozing out of the armour and sawing at the vines. Another moment and the vines snapped clean through. The armour seemed to bulge outwards, the plates shifting further apart, all its limbs getting that bit longer. It drew itself up to its new full height and Al tensed for the inevitable attack.

Which did not come. Instead, the armour set off at a run for the boundary wall, moving far faster than it had done before. Even as Al sprang to follow, it was swarming up and over, smashing its own hand and footholds. It took Al half a minute to do what it had managed in twenty seconds and by the time he got to the top of the wall, his quarry was disappearing down the road. If it was able to keep up this new pace, there was no way he could catch it.

What the heck did it mean, that it had been hiding in 'Mr Clier's' room? What was the connection to – anything, really? He got the feeling the answers were running away from him just like the armour and he was not going to be able to catch either of them on foot.

Stopping at the curb, he stared after the armour in dismay. It was charging away downhill, out of the up-market district in which the mansion stood, bushing pedestrians aside without a glance. If they didn't find some way to stop it, it was likely to hurt someone who just got in its way. At least most people seemed to have the brains to step aside . . .

“We'll never catch it.” Noah came up beside him, clothes in disarray from the climb over the wall. She was flushed and out of breath – the transmutation on the lawn must have taken a lot out of her. Obviously she was still determined to keep up the chase though. “Maybe we could find a taxi?”

Al had visions of shouting 'follow that suit of armour!' at some poor taxi-driver. But before he could say anything, there was a loud honk and the screech of breaks behind him and Lady Penny's pink monster of a car thundered to a stop next to them.

“Get in my dears!” Penny shouted from the back, throwing the door open, “There's no time to lose!”

 

* * *

 

Winry waited a couple of minutes and that was all together too long. When she finally tore her eyes away from the open manhole, it was to hear sirens and pounding footsteps coming towards her. The first soldier appeared before she could even properly consider making a break for it and shouted at her to stay where she was. At least, that's what she assumed he was shouting; it was kind of hard to make out.

Seeing as how they had guns and dogs, she went very still and waited for them to come to her. She would point them straight down the sewer anyway, not that she was sure how effective they would be at catching someone like Edw – like the homunculus.

At first she thought the tremor beneath her was just the oncoming soldiers. Then it got stronger. Then the ground heaved. The man in the lead came to a staggering halt, looking around in confusion. The dogs went crazy, barking like mad.

Winry gave a shout of horror as the lower storey of one of the buildings up near the soldiers gave way. The whole back wall came crashing down in a cloud of brick dust. The paving slabs in front of her surged upwards, tipping her off her feet. A great _whomph_ of air exploded from the gaping chasm and a figure shot up with it.

Michael. It had to be. She saw him see her as he flew past, his face ashen and dirt-streaked, eyes wide and scared.

A second, darker figure with a mane of golden hair leapt after him, tackling him in mid-air, spinning him around, smashing him against a roof. They rolled about up there, quickly vanishing from her line of sight. Moments later, a burst of red light blew out the top of the building.

Winry shoved herself quickly back from the cascade of broken tiles, stifling a terrified cry. Her heart was hammering fit to break her ribs and it was all she could do not to scream when a hand gripped her shoulder.

“Winry?!” Ed's face was as dirt-spattered as Michael's, his cheek caked in blood, his hair escaping his ponytail in all directions. “What are you doing here?! Wait, did you see where they went? Michael and the –”

“Up there!” She pointed with one arm and tried to lock the other around him at the same time, which didn't quite work.

“Shit. I need to get after them – Winry, you need to get somewhere safe. I don't know what the hell that thing wants with Michael but – fuck, I don't even know if I can follow them through this!”

A deep and terrible sinking feeling filled Winry guts. She tightened her grip on Ed, who started to protest until her saw her face. Nearly choking on the dust, she took a shuddering breath. “You don't need to follow them,” she rasped, “I know where they're going.”


	11. Jewel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news! I've completed the major plot elements and have started the wrapping up chapter.
> 
> Bad news! The major plot chapter ended up so long I've had to split it in two, so you're getting it spread over two weeks rather than in one go.
> 
> But hey! Another cliffhanger. Love a cliffhanger. Particularly when it's not happening to me.
> 
> Ain't I a stinker?
> 
> Enjoy! And tune in again next Sunday for the exciting climax!

“There 'e goes, m'lady!”

Parker threw them into a turn so sharp it nearly had the car bending in the middle. Noah gripped the seat with white-knuckles, though she was relying on being wedged so tight between Al and Penny to keep her in place. Horns blared around them, angry drivers startled out of their mid-day languor by the speeding pink monster.

Ahead, the armour pounded tirelessly on. It kept taking routes they could not follow, so they had to keep looking for ways to cut it off or drive parallel to it. This meant constantly falling behind or getting too far ahead. It was moving so fast and with more agility than should have been possible for anything made of steel. If it did not get stuck or come to a stop of its on accord, Noah really could not see how they were could to bring it to a halt.

Or what they would do if they did.

“Does anybody have any idea where it's heading?” Al asked, shouting. He was leaning so far out of the window Noah was afraid he was going to go tumbling out the next time they took a corner. “I don't know the city well enough to guess.”

“Sorry, dear, it's beyond me too.” Penny had her head stuck through of the other window, although she was sensible enough not to actually lean out any further. “Parker?”

“'E keeps changing direction, m'lady! I can't tell h'whether e's trying to avoid us or go somewhere special!”

“Just keep on him, Parker! We'll catch him yet!”

They screeched around another, even tighter bend and Noah tightened her grip, wondering which was going to give out first: her nerves or the car's balance?

 

* * *

 

Ed stopped just long enough to make sure none of the soldiers had been seriously hurt by the building collapse and to order them into the sewer to help the squad trapped down there. Then he started running. Winry caught up just as he came to the edge of a street apparently untroubled by alchemists and rampaging homunculi.

“Wait!” she gasped, still recovering from a lungful of brick dust, “Ed, wait!”

He made to shrug her hand off his arm but stopped himself. “You said you know where they're going?”

“Yes – he told me – the other y – _him_. He said – if you wanted to find him, he'd be at Alber Wharf. Warehouse eleven.”

“I know where that is.” There was a street sign opposite and he plotted the distance on the latest map of Central he'd memorised. “Fuck. That's two kilometres away. They can't be that far ahead but – he can probably move much faster than I can –”

“Can't you get a car to help you? Those soldiers –”

“I can't get them involved! They wouldn't stand a chance – Fiat, Ross, hell, even Mustang – that thing is _dangerous_ –” And Winry had been close to it, close enough to talk to it, close enough that it could have –

“You should stay here,” he blurted, horrified by the possibilities. What could have happened to her. “Go back to the soldiers, you'll be safe with them.”

“While you go off into danger? On your own? Again?”

“Winry, that thing – that other me or whatever he is now – he could kill you! _Michael_ could kill you!”

“Michael?! Why would –”

“He's the murderer!”

“He's _what_?!”

“It's all over his family and some fucking watch – I don't have time to explain. I need to stop them both before –”

“Before what?”

“I don't know! But it's not going to be any freakin' good, is it?!”

He stood there trembling, one hand buried in his hair, the other shaking as he raised it in a jab at the sky. What the hell was he supposed to do now? He _couldn't_ get anyone else involved, not with both Michael _and_ the other Edward to deal with. Of course, between the two of them, he wasn't sure he was exactly going to come out on top either but better him being the one that got hurt than anyone else. What was even the deal with the homunculus? Why would he go after the watch? How did he _know_ about it?

“OK, look.” Winry put her hands on her hips. “We need to get you a car. I think . . .” She turned around a couple of times. “This way. Come on!” And she was off, half-running up the street.

Confused, Ed went after her. “Where are you going?”

Rather than answering, Winry sped up and darted into a side-street where a line of three cars had been parked beside a . . . club, maybe? He wasn't sure and it didn't really matter because the first thing Winry did was tell him to keep watch. Then she quickly unscrewed the middle car's fuel cap and whistled into the tank.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, “We don't have time –”

“Checking this has got petrol. Keep _watch_ , Ed! Make sure no one's looking. This is going to take a minute.” She knelt down by the driver's door and something shiny flashed between her fingers.

Oh. Right. “OK,” Ed mumbled, taking up something like a semi-casual stance beside the car and glancing surreptitiously up and down the street. He almost definitely looked even more suspicious doing that than he would have leaning over and trying to yank the door open. Still . . . while it might have been more legal to find a taxi, hadn't he just been arguing that they needed to keep other people out of it all?

There was a soft click and Winry eased the car door open. “I'll drive,” she announced, slipping inside.

He hurried to join her. “We need to go right first. I can remember the way to the river and we can work it out from there.”

“You're the boss.” She tripped the ignition and yanked the steering wheel.

“Hey!”

Ed threw a glance out of the window at the man running towards them in a posh suit and a bad temper. “That's my car!” he was yelling, which was a bit predictable really.

Any other day, Ed might have felt sorry for him. “State Alchemist business!” he shouted back, waving his watch as Winry swung them into the street and put her foot down hard on the accelerator, “We'll bring it back!”

“We will?”

He frowned at her. “Someone will. Take the next left.”

She nodded, hands tight on the wheel. “And now we've got a few minutes, you can tell me just what the hell is going on.”

 

* * *

 

“Just what the hell is going on down here?”

“Ah, General.” Fiat looked a little flustered, which in Mustang's mind was entirely appropriate and was not for one moment going to stop him laying into the Colonel for screwing things up so badly. “Everything is under control.”

Especially if he was going to say things like that. “Under control? Under _control_?” Mustang dragged the word out into a parody of itself. “Enlighten me, Colonel: what exactly _is_ your definition of control because mine does not usually include wanted criminals rampaging across the city, taking out entire squads of trained soldiers!”

Fiat at least had the grace to concede the point. “But I have every confidence we will soon have the culprit in custody.”

Mustang took a breath, ready to start explaining just how unimpressed he was with _that_ reassurance, but was forestalled by the arrival – at a run – of Lieutenant Ross. There were dust stains down her sleeves. “Sir – sirs! Sorry to interrupt but I've been talking to some of the troops who were caught in the blasts – they report seeing someone fighting with the suspect. Most of them only got a very brief look at this other man but their description matches with one of the people who attacked Headquarters.”

Since one of those descriptions of those people amounted to 'was wearing a cloak', Mustang immediately assumed the worst. “What about Fullmetal?”

“Major Elric was on the scene but he left in pursuit of Michael and – whoever else was there. No sign of him afterwards. One of the men said he saw him leaving with a girl – its sounded like Miss Winry, sir.”

Mustang's blood ran cold. “I want that confirmed.”

“I already ordered some men to fan out through the neighbourhood and see if they could locate either of them, sir. No luck so far.”

“Tell them to keep looking. I want –”

“Colonel!” Another messenger hurried up, not someone Mustang recognised. One of Fiat's men, obviously. “General – sir, sorry, there's –” He stopped to catch his breath.

The corner of Fiat's eye twitched, ever so slightly. “Do you have a reason to interrupt a superior officer with your wheezing, corporal?”

The man shot to attention. “Yessir. Sorrysir. Only. Uh. There's a suit of armour.”

“I _beg_ your pardon?”

“There's a suit of armour running through the city. Sir. It just came in over the police radio. They're saying it's twice as tall as a man and charging through the streets like a runaway express, sir.”

“And those in its path are not pedantic enough to call it a person _in_ a suit of armour?”

“Well, uh, sir, they're saying it's not moving like a person possibly could. The police are requesting help since it's moving so fast and . . . not stopping. Sir.”

“For goodness sake! We're already –”

“I'll handle it,” Mustang cut in. He returned Fiat's stare coldly. “You focus on catching Helmont. I'll deploy to help the police contain whatever this is. I'm sure I'm more than a match for an escaped costume party.”

“Very well. You. Get the General everything he needs to know about this fresh lunacy. Ross, with me. We need to hurry this along.”

“Is it a good idea leaving them?” Hawkeye breathed the question into the moment of privacy they got following the corporal back to the radio.

“Ed's on the case. I trust him to sort this out.”

“And to keep Winry safe.”

It was not a question but Mustang felt an urge to treat it as one. “Of course. Fiat will back them up.”

“Provided he catches them in time.”

He really wished she hadn't said that.

 

* * *

 

Winry drove past the gateway into Alber Wharf. They'd decided that was the best idea, to make it look less like they were going straight there. Although, actually, in the end, they nearly missed the sign.

She pulled up just as the road started to curve. Behind them, the backs of warehouses stood one after the other in a mountainous row. Opposite them were shipping offices, once grand buildings from when Central relied on the rivers for its goods. Only a few seemed to still be in business.

“Right.” Ed craned his neck to look through the back window. “Lucky they put the numbers on this side too. I can climb up to the roof and get into number eleven that way.”

“And what do I do while you're doing that?”

“Winry . . .”

He was going to tell her to stay there. She could see it in his eyes. While he went to take on goodness knew what, he was going to tell her to stay in the car where it was safe. The terrible thing was, she would probably agree to do just that. Her skin crawled at the thought of what would be waiting inside. The other Edward, who could toss manhole covers around like dinner plates and Michael, who was nothing like he'd seemed, and who knew what else? She _knew_ it was nothing she could handle.

But –

Ed's jaw tightened with determination. “Wait for me to get up the wall then go find a phone. Not on the wharf. Try over there. Get through the Headquarters and get Mustang to send – just get him to send everyone. OK?”

“Y-yeah. That I can do.” She cupped his chin in her hand and he leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering shut. “You sure you want to go in there alone? Why don't you wait for the General to get here?”

“I can't wait. I don't know what they're doing in there but . . . that watch – if Michael was telling the truth –”

“All right. I get it. Just . . . be careful.”

Managing a weak grin, Ed nodded. “Anything for you.”

He raised his head and pulled away, gripping the door handle. “Wait 'til I'm on the roof.”

“I got it. And . . . I . . .” Love you. She swallowed hard and did. Not. Say. It. Because that would be too much like goodbye and this could under no circumstances be a goodbye. “Good luck.”

She watched him in the mirrors, sidling away from the car and then strolling back past the gate, past warehouses eight, nine, ten –

One quick look around and he was swarming up a drainpipe, agile as a squirrel. No one shouted or raised the alarm. After all, why would anyone spend their time watching a street as dull and empty as this one? Ed reached the top of the pipe and swung his legs over the edge of the roof. Another couple of seconds and he was up, crouching down and slinking out of Winry's sight.

She took a deep breath. She got out of the car and surveyed the doors across the road. The Central Barge Company. That looked like the best bet. She'd try there first.

After a moment's thought, she looked under the back seat. The car's owner had thoughtfully stowed a heavy spanner there in case of emergency. Winry fished it out and hefted it in her hand. Perfect.

The people in the Central Barge Company's office were very happy to let her use their phone. Indeed, they practically rushed to oblige the crazed woman waving around half a metre of solid steel.

She got through to Sheska almost immediately. _“Oh my word, Winry! Are you OK? They said you were there when –”_

“Sheska, I need to talk to General Mustang right away. It's important.”

“ _O-oh – well I can't – Mr Fuery's in the hospital so I don't know if there's anyone I can call specifically to get him. Everyone's down in the city . . . they're chasing –”_

“I can guess. Well . . .” Winry thought rapidly. She trusted the General but Ed needed help right now. “Is there anyone you can put me through to? I – look, I know where Michael is, OK?”

“ _Oh! Wow, OK – I can put you through to the Colonel's radio. But –”_

“OK, do that. If he doesn't believe me then . . . well, I'll just have to make him.”

“ _All right . . . just a second –”_

The line crackled and clicked a couple of times. _“Hello, Winry?”_

“Lieutenant Ross? Oh I'm so glad it's you! Look, I know where Michael is. Ed's gone in after them and I need you to send help down here right now!”

“ _Winry, you need to slow down. What do you mean you know –”_

“ _Miss Rockbell,”_ said a deep, unfamiliar voice, _“This is Colonel Fiat. Please start at the beginning. Where are you?”_

As clearly as she could, Winry told him everything, leaving out only the fact that she knew exactly who the 'mysterious super-strong man' who'd taken Michael was. She fought the urge to rush, to demand. The General would have come in a heartbeat but Fiat was not Mustang and he didn't know her. Would he even believe her?

“ _Understood,”_ he said and her heart leapt, _“We'll be there ASAP. Stay under cover. Where are you now? Oh, the CBC. Excellent. Keep everyone off the street. Help is on the way.”_

The phone went dead and she yanked it away from her ear. The people around her shuffled nervously, eyes darting from her to the window. Not surprising. Nothing she had told Fiat would have been reassuring to them.

“It's OK,” she told them, “Help's coming. Just . . . stay off the street. And . . . maybe get to the back rooms? Just to be on the safe side.”

It was at that point that her ears caught a rapid metallic pounding noise coming from outside. Pushing her way to the front of the office, she peered through the window but could see nothing. While the CBC staff began to back away, she went to the door – which she had left open on the way in – and looked out. The noise was getting louder and there was another sound behind it, a dull roaring that was –

Coming closer.

The strange thing was, when the two-metre tall suit of armour came into view, legs pumping like a steam-engine, she was not actually all that shocked.

It had been that kind of day.

 

* * *

 

“Keep on it Parker! There's nowhere it can dodge out of the way down here!”

Penny's triumphant shout accompanied another terrifying corner that took the car down a long street hemmed in by grim buildings. There were fewer pedestrians jumping out of the way now and the little Noah could see of the place blurring past made her think of the factories and warehouses on the edges of Munich. The armour was dead ahead, not slowing down but as Penny said, there was now nowhere for it to go.

Noah hung on for dear life as Parker accelerated. The car's monster engine shouted and she was pretty sure Al did as well. They charged forward, a runaway titan chasing an out of control colossus. The street began to curve, just enough that they might have lost sight of the armour if they had not been inching closer and closer –

They skidded and swerved, Parker desperately slamming on the brakes. The armour had come to a stop across the road from another car, parked opposite an open door, standing in which was –

“Winry!” Al jumped from the still moving car and Noah launched herself after him. Their claps were seconds apart.

Twin spikes smashed the armour into the air, flinging it several feet along the road. Winry jumped back inside then stuck her head out again. “Al?! Noah?! What the HELL –”

The armour got back up and swung around to face them. Even without a moving face, it managed to look very, very angry.

It took two steps forward, grabbed the end of one of the spikes and snapped it clean off. Al and Noah scattered in opposite directions as it flung the lump of stone at them with enough force to cave in the side of Penny's car.

There was no time to do something clever before the armour ripped off another lump of road. Noah dived out of the way, catching several cuts from the shrapnel as the missile exploded against the ground. A transmutation singed the air and stone fists pummelled into existence, all around their foe.

But it was moving so fast now that Al's brute force approach mostly missed. The armour was across the street in a second, remorseless fingers plunging into the side of the parked car. It heaved the whole thing up over its head and Noah froze, horrified, with no idea which way to run.

The air crackled again. The car became a fireball.

“Everybody down!” someone shouted and Noah dropped to her knees, lightning at her fingertips.

She got the wall up over her head just in time. There was a great _whoomphf_ of heat and bits of car hailed down, bolts and fenders bouncing in all directions, every part wreathed in fire.

“Move in!” It was General Mustang's voice, booming with authority. “Get these offices cleared – take the civilians through the back doors!”

Warily, Noah scuttled out from under her transmuted cover. The armour was burning where it stood. Past the heat-haze, she could see figures in blue running up the street towards them. She turned, looking for Al and Winry –

With a great creak of distressed steel, the armour started moving again. It shook itself, sloughing off globs of flaming petrol. The General shouted again but his words were lost to the sound of the armour bending down and seizing the remains of the engine, which it proceeded to bowl one-handed at the soldiers.

As shots started to ring out, Noah made a dash back to Penny's car. She found Al hunkering behind it with Penny and Parker – and Winry, who was clutching a spanner and staring around the back bumper. “What the hell is that thing?” she demanded, “Is it like – you, err, you know?”

“I don't think so.” Al shook his head. “I think there's something inside but I don't see how it can be human. We found it at the League mansion. It was hiding in the room where –” He broke off and Noah knew what he wanted to say but couldn't blurt out with other people right next to him.

“The person who attacked the barracks,” she supplied, “We think they were hiding at the League. When we went to check, that thing attacked us and ran away. We followed it.”

“But –” Winry's eyes went wide. “We followed – that person. Ed and me, we were following him. He ran off with Michael – who is the killer, apparently – and we chased them to one of the warehouses up there. Well . . . actually, he told us where to look but – Ed's gone in there after him!”

“Michael's the killer?!” Al spluttered, “And Ed – damnit!”

He shot to his feet and both Winry and Noah pulled him back down. “Wait!” Winry ordered, “Don't be dumb – you can't go out there!”

A jet of fire shot overhead to underscore her point, though it did nothing to discourage the armour from its slow advance on the soldiers who were by now desperately peppering it with bullets while General Mustang tried to attack it without incinerating everyone on the street. Reluctantly, Al allowed himself to be dragged back into cover. “We can't just stay here!”

“I'm open to suggestions on how we help, dear.” Penny peered over the bonnet. “I'd certainly say those strapping lads out there could use a hand.”

“Do you think it's here to protect . . . ?” Winry bit her lip. “You know – woah!”

The sudden bright red flash ripped a jagged hole in one of warehouse walls, bombarding the soldiers with lumps of brick. Noah saw the General fling up his arm to protect his face and his men stopped firing to do the same. The distraction gave the armour a clear shot at them all. Yet instead of charging the soldiers, it made straight for the broken wall and started tearing the opening wider.

“That's the one Ed went into!” Winry hissed urgently.

“Damn!” Al pressed his hands to his face then against the side of the car. “We can't let it get in there after him. Not if –”

“Maybe we could seal it underground,” Noah suggested, “Fill it up with stone?”

“I think it's strong enough to get out . . . no. I've got an idea. But . . .” Sheepishly, he looked across at Penny. “You're probably not going to like it.”

 

* * *

 

Luckily, the warehouse had an upper level so Ed didn't break his neck climbing in through one of the skylights. He lowered himself gingerly inside and dropped _almost_ soundlessly to the wooden floor. Dust swirled around him. The air smelt of must and neglect, reminding him of some of the better attics he'd slept in during his life in the other world. At least it was dry.

The loft was mostly empty. A few crates sat in the corner, covered in cobwebs. Other than that . . . not a lot. He crept along to the stairs at the back, treading carefully and wincing at the slightest creak. A quick glance showed that there was no one at the bottom of the staircase and that he could not see very much _beyond_ the bottom of the staircase. Great. There wasn't even a wall to hide behind on the way down – it was completely open.

Aaaand it was not like he had any choice.

Taking it a step at a time, he made his wary way down.

The staircase ended on a platform, not quite as empty as the loft but pretty close. There were no windows. A soft blue glow seeped up from below, making shadows from stacks of pallets taller than Ed. He tip-toed past them to reach the guard rail and looked down.

He was standing about two and a half metres off ground level. Another set of steps off to the right gave access to the open floor. There were a few more crates scattered around and a bunch more pallets – and a transmutation circle. A big one. Ed followed the lines, with a nagging sense of familiarity. He was sure he'd seen it before.

They'd pinned Michael in the middle of it, bent into a crescent around a short stone pillar, his hands and feet clamped to the floor. The watch chain was stretched out from his side up to the top of the pillar, where the pocket-watch sat, wide open, the clock face lifted out on a stack of wafer-thin metal discs that must have telescoped from the case. They clicked and rotated, pulsing with energy.

The hair on Ed's left arm stood on end. The start of a transmutation was building all around him.

He felt the motion before he saw it. That saved his life. He flinched out of the way of the first throwing knife, dodged the second and ducked the third and fourth. By the time the fifth was coming his way, he was already going into a punch that would have buried his fist in the hooded figure's gut.

Something struck him in the back and pain seared through his body. He fell, every muscle spasming and sparks flying from his auto-mail. The fucker had electrocuted him! More by luck then judgement, he twisted as he went down and caught a glimpse of the knives stuck in the floor, forming a rough circle. The wood around them was scorched. How in the hell . . . ?

The hooded figure kicked him and he flopped on to his back, vision swimming. Everything hurt but he didn't think he was actually permanently damaged. He tried curling his fingers and managed it on the second go.

The figure looked down at him and he thought it was about to kick him again. Instead it pulled back its hood.

“Huh,” he managed to say.

Cassandra Panavia, secretary to the League of Independent Alchemists, sneered and spat in his face. “Look at you. The golden boy of Amestris! What a joke.”

Ed slowly curled his arm around and wiped his cheek. “Nice to see you again too.”

It was funny how expressions changed the way people looked. Right now there was no trace of the mousey woman who'd handed him Euler's notes. In her place was a frustrated mask of viciousness and disgust. “I thought you'd be more surprised to see me. Aren't I the last person you'd have suspected?”

“Maybe. It, ah, makes a lot of sense though, doesn't it? You'd have been perfectly . . . ow . . . perfectly placed to organise Euler and the rest. They do all the work and you wait safe and sound for them to bring you the watch. Right?”

“Something like that. Shame they made such a mess of it.”

“Hey, don't be too hard on them. They'd have probably taken Michael down if I hadn't been there. That _was_ Euler with Lohner or Lindau or whatever when he attacked us, wasn't it?”

“Of course. They hired that woman to back them up. Thought it would give them the edge. And then screwed it up anyway.”

“And you let Euler take the fall for it all.”

She laughed, high and bitter. “The old fool was supposed to die resisting arrest but thanks to your brother's apprentice, he didn't even get that right. I had to shut him up quickly before he gave everything away.”

Ed gave the best shrug he could. “Worked out all right anyway. You've got the watch _and_ Michael. So: now what?”

Her arms were hidden by the cloak, so she could have more knives ready to use if he tried to rush her. Thing was, he was at least twenty percent more stab-proof than most people, so . . .

“Now,” she said with obvious relish, “I kill every stinking traitor in this city and laugh over their burning corpses.”

“Oh – _kay_. Working for Penny that bad, huh?”

“Hardly. That woman was the one bright spot in all this. If the rest of your shared her drive and determination to make things better, I might not want to do this so much. Of course, you don't, so this – this will be justice. It will be glorious. And you're going to get a front-row seat, Edward Elric. I'm almost envious.”

Rolling slightly on to his right shoulder, Ed turned his head so that he was looking down at Michael again. Now he remembered where he'd seen that circle before. “That's the Black Fire array, isn't it? His grandmother's alchemy. Mustang told me about it. I've seen something like it in action but not the full thing. Let me guess: you supercharge it with the watch and use that murdering nut-case down there as the starting material. You run away and watch from a safe distance. The reaction spreads out, eating up anyone in its path and choking everyone else. Bye-bye Central. Loads of people dead. You cheer.”

“Exactly.”

“Lady. You are sick.”

He kicked out. As expected, she reacted with a knife that flashed out of the folds of her cloak. But it was his left leg and the most she achieved was slicing up some Military blue before his boot slammed into her ribs. Ed flipped to his feet as she staggered and, ignoring the pain, drove his shoulder into her chin. Her head snapped back and before she could recover, he grabbed her wrists, forcing her to drop yet another knife. Twisting her arms, he pinned them behind her back and held on like grim death.

“Did Euler know?” he growled into her ear, “Did any of them know what you were planning?”

“Of course not! They talked about putting the right people back in charge but they'd have never had the guts to do what it takes to get that done!”

“Yeah, well, hope you enjoyed playing with your super-weapon. You're not going to get the chance to turn it on.”

“Hah! I thought you were supposed to be one of the clever ones. Look at it! Do you really think I _need_ to?”

Ed stopped himself from turning and looking but he could remember enough of the details of what was on the warehouse floor to know she wasn't lying. The watch, the circle – they were _already_ active. “So how do I _stop_ it?”

“You know, I didn't bother working that out. Right now, the arrays in the watch are moving into alignment, feeding more and more charge into the circle. No alchemist required! It's very clever! And when it reaches full power –”

“Well, you'd better start working out how to stop that happening because if you don't, _you're_ gonna be standing right here when it goes off!”

Cassandra suddenly stopped straining against his grip. “No I'm not,” she said and he could hear her smiling.

The worst thing about the growl, when it came from the darkness back behind the pallets, was how human it sounded. It wasn't the noise an animal would make. There was far too much hate in it for that.

In the second Ed was distracted, Cassandra twisted from his grip and shoved him against the platform's guard rail. He recovered his balance just in time to be firmly on his feet when the monster with golden hair barrelled out of the shadows and dragged him over the edge.


	12. Stopwatch

They fell for a long, heart-stopping second.

The landing hurt. A lot. Somehow, despite the pain, Ed managed to roll with it and throw the homunculus off.

They came to their feet on opposite sides of the circle, Ed slipping into a ready position as easily as he could given that he'd just shaken every single one of his remaining bones. He fervently hoped that nothing important was about to give out under sustained punishment, because it looked like there was about to be a lot more of that.

Edward March had changed _a lot_ since he'd fled into the void between worlds. No longer an invalid with a stick-thin body and a skull barely covered with skin: his hair hung down past his shoulders and taught muscles showed through the skin-tight black leather across his torso. Like Greed, he was wearing proper trousers, with workman's shoes on his feet. Other than that, it was a homunculus' wardrobe all the way. There was the ouroboros on his shoulder, surrounded by a pattern of burn scars that Ed tried not to think too hard about.

His face –

The boy that Ed had taken from the ruins of the Chambers Institute had been a child in a teenager's body, running on emotion and only a dim understanding of what was going on around him. He'd been crazy and annoying as hell but for all that . . . sweet. _Nice._ He'd put his life on the line to protect Ed.

Now though . . .

It wasn't the psychotic look Wrath had gotten or the smugness Greed had had. Instead, it was all hate and spite and one hell of a lot of fury. The nearest Ed could think to compare it to was the expression on Envy's face back in Lab Five.

Which was all kinds of terrifying.

“Edward . . .” He wasn't sure if he was greeting his doppelgänger, reminding him who he was or just trying to delay the fight as long as possible.

“ _Ed_.”

He cringed, heart twisting with guilt. “Look . . . you've got every reason to hate me. I get that. I . . . I don't blame you. But you must have heard her! She wants to kill everyone in the city! You're not a bad person! You helped me against Chambers, you helped _protect_ people! You gotta do that now! Let me stop this, then you can do whatever you like to me! I won't fight you! Just let me stop the reaction!”

Edward did not say anything. Just stood there, slightly hunched over, head thrust forward, hands curled into talons.

“Come on! If it's me you want to hurt – that's fine! But why would you help kill people? Why would you help her destroy the city?!”

“BECAUSE YOU DESTROYED MY LIFE!”

He hurtled at Ed, who spun aside, caught his arm as he passed and flipped him easily. Edward came up again almost at once, snarling and lashing out. Again, there was no real skill there. Just raw strength and speed.

That was bad enough and Ed was pretty sure it cost him a few fresh dents to his right arm, but it _was_ survivable. He even got a few blows in, to Edward's head and side, and a solid left-footed kick to his gut. Then a vicious upper-cut set the world spinning and Ed felt the floor go out from under him.

Dimly, he thought he heard something crashing about in the distance, except that was probably just his skull rebounding.

Lucky it was so thick, really.

He drew his knees up to his chest and kicked, keeping Edward away for the precious seconds it took to clap. The fight had taken them right to the edge of the warehouse, meaning he could just reach over his head and touch the wall behind him. The bricks liquefied and steamed out into a pair of arms that wrapped tightly around Edward and held him there while Ed slipped out from under him.

The first thing he noticed on reaching the circle was that Michael was still alive. He'd assumed that they'd killed him and not bothered cutting the watch chain free yet when he got close, he saw Michael's eyes were open and moving. Ed felt an impulse to reassure him and promptly squashed it. No way was he wasting sympathy on the guy now. He studied the array carefully, noting the way the lines carried on up the pillar on which the watch stood. Made sense, plugging the damn thing into the rest. Most of the array's structure was on the edge anyway, leaving a nice clear space in which they'd been able to dump Michael. So if he cut across that –

From outside, on the other side of the wall at the end of the warehouse, there came the sound of an explosion followed by shouting.

“What the – no, don't care. You,” Ed ordered Michael, “Stay still and I might not hurt you.” He skirted the circle for a couple of paces then braced himself and clapped, intending to create a clean break between two of the fire-control elements and thus stop the reaction in its tracks.

It was a great plan and would have worked perfectly if energy for the transmutation hadn't leapt straight from his fingertips to the watch.

“Ow! Shit!” Oh fuck. He'd assumed that the watch needed to be attached to someone to siphon power from them. Apparently not. Wait, surely it couldn't have acted like that all the time, not with Michael transmuting left, right and centre. Maybe because it was opened up? Or perhaps there was a switch on it somewhere. 'Push for mega-drain.'

In any case, if he couldn't transmute a hole in the array, Ed was going to have to find another way. There was obviously a range on the thing – he'd been able to perform alchemy just fine over by the wall. So if he backed up a bit . . .

Would the transmutation just stop dead when it got near the watch though? The circle had been carved into the floor, pretty deep too. He couldn't just make a blade and hack it to bits. Well, he could, but it would take a while to manage it and honestly, hacking at the lines of an active array sounded like a really dumb idea.

Also the best one he had.

How far back would he need to get? Well, Cassandra was able to use her weird-ass alchemy up on the platform so if he went over there, that should be enough. There was enough space underneath that he didn't need to bother climbing up. He'd go a little way behind where he guessed they'd been standing and –

“Watch out!”

Michael's hoarse warning came just a second too late to be of any use. Before Ed had time to clap, the trap he'd caught Edward in _exploded_. Red sparks showered down as the homunculus/man/ _thing_ burst free. He crossed the distance in a single inhuman leap and crashed down in front of Ed with the force of a small comet. The floor burst under him and a jagged line of crimson deconstruction tore through the remaining length of the warehouse. The platform split apart, blown to matchwood by the uncontrolled transmutation. Wood splinters showered down as the rear wall cracked from bottom to top.

Somehow, Ed managed not to fall over again. Either by dumb luck or bad aim, the blast did not catch him dead on and he was able to bound out of the way.

Much good it did him. Edward was on him in an instant, grabbing his arms and wrenching them apart. He snarled.

“Y-you gotta stop this!” Ed yelled, “Just let me –”

Then something massive punched its way in through the crack in the wall and he broke off to stare in blank disbelief as a giant suit of early-modern armour came crashing into the warehouse.

It looked almost exactly like the illustration on one of the first texts he could remember reading about animating solid objects. The same huge proportions and glowering design. Of course, the one in the book had been a statue whereas this was clearly not. It drew itself up to a totally ridiculous height and flexed as if it was Alex Louis Armstrong, about to jump into some display of muscular prowess.

Ed would have been intimidated except, well, the whole 'sealing his little brother inside a giant suit of armour when he was eleven' thing. As it was, what he mainly felt was confusion.

He was even more confused when Edward leaned in close and hissed, “Go limp.”

Shock must have been setting in because Ed did as he was told. He was immediately tossed to the ground and pinned there, an arm across his throat. The armour lumbered closer and loomed over them. Edward twisted to snarl up at it. “ _Mine_!”

Which was just disturbing. Especially given that lightning started crackling around his free hand when he turned back to Ed. Strangely though, his eyes were still off to the side, looking towards the armour . . .

That was the point when things started getting really weird.

Something else came through the crack in the rear wall. _Another_ suit of armour. Only this one was even bigger and a whole lot more familiar. More curving than the first, with a single spike on the helmet and two lively points of light behind the visor. Although there were also car tyres on the shoulders. And a lot of the plates were bright pink. _Really_ bright pink. Ed could see that all too clearly in the light coming from the street. It was a relief when the watch's glow started turning it all blue.

Also a relief: the second suit of armour picking up the first and throwing it bodily towards the warehouse doors.

“Brother!” Al's voice boomed from the pink helmet as he saw Ed. A huge hand that looked suspiciously like it was made from chrome exhaust pipes reached for Edward.

“No, Al!” Ed shouted back, “Smash the array! Quick!”

The helmet squeaked around, the points of light narrowing.

Al went past at a run and, without hesitation, brought his fists down on a point on the circle opposite Michael. The floor cracked, a thick black gap breaking the lines of the Black Fire array. A thunderclap echoed the breaking stone. Michael let out an agonised scream as smoke rose from his body. The light that had been pulsing through the circle suddenly seemed to rush inwards, sucked back into the telescoped watch. There was another puff of smoke, a sob from Michael and then – nothing.

Nothing except the first suit of armour charging back towards them.

The weight on Ed's chest abruptly vanished. Another deconstructive blast curved across the room. He cried out, thinking that Edward was about to join an attack on Al –

Only Al wasn’t the one who went flying.

Dragging his protesting body to his feet once more, Ed breathed in the stink of fire, lightning and seared flesh. A metre or so away, Edward straightened as well. A metre from _him_ , Al stood uncertainly with his fists raised again. The other armour was on its hands and knees by the doors, half its back buckled inwards by the impact with the wall immediately _above_ the doors.

Everyone looked at everyone else.

“Fullmetal?” Mustang called from the hole leading to the street, “What's going on in here?”

Edward's arm shot up, finger pointed at the armour. “You need to get that thing away from here. Right now.”

“Ed . . . ?” Al asked.

“Do it.” Ed did not take his eyes off Edward.

“But – err . . . OK!”

The great pink behemoth stomped towards the armour. As Al got closer, he broke into a run and, catching it around the chest, carried it straight through the doors. Sunlight and river air washed in as the thundering footsteps faded into the distance.

“Well, that is going on apparently.” Mustang came up behind Ed, with Hawkeye at his shoulder and a dozen soldiers behind her. “Anything to add, Fullmetal?”

“Why did you do that?” Ed demanded, not talking to the General.

Edward was expressionless. His voice was low and flat. “Because I am _not_ a bad person. And I _don't_ want anyone to die.”

“Then why –”

“Later. Look at the pocket-watch. Shouldn't it have stopped when your brother broke the circle?”

The watch was still glowing. If anything, it was getting brighter.

“Oh fuck.”

“That thing is a battery or a capacitor for whatever it is powers your 'alchemy', yes? It would have discharged through that magic circle Cassandra carved.”

“It's not a –”

“Well whatever it is, it's been smashed to bits. So what happens when the watch discharges now?”

 _Oh fuck_. “A crater half a kilometre wide.”

Ed whirled to face Mustang. “General, you need to clear the area. The entire docks, the streets near here – you need to get everyone out now!”

“Got it. What are _you_ going to do?”

“We're gonna see if we can stop this thing blowing us all to hell. Aren't we?”

Edward's nod was perfunctory but it was still a nod.

“Understood. Captain – take the north.”

“Yessir.” Hawkeye headed off at a run, taking half the soldiers with her.

Mustang scrutinised Edward, eye hard and glittering. “Do you want me to leave a guard, Fullmetal?”

“They’d just get in the way. Go already!”

He went. As soon as the soldiers were out of the warehouse, Ed ran to the remains of the array. Despite the screaming, Michael was still alive, though pretty much unconscious with pain. His clothes were scorched and his skin raw. The reaction must have burnt off the top layer as it died. Could have been worse.

“If he were dead, we could throw the whole lot into the river,” Edward said, practically in Ed’s ear, “Would that be enough to smoother the blast?”

“I don’t know. Since he’s _not_ dead, we can’t do it anyway.” Irritated, Ed pulled away. Then he stopped and took a long look at the other . . . him. “Can I trust you?”

“Probably not. It should reassure you that I’m still here though. I don’t want to get blown up either.”

Ed got on his knees to take a closer look at the watch chain. “Except you’ll come back.”

“You make it sound pleasant. Even if I can’t begin to understand how that works, I can assure you it hurts. A lot.”

“Still not dead. It’s the red stones. They gave you red stones, didn’t they?”

“The things they made me eat? Yes.”

“They’re like this thing. An alchemic power source. They let your body put itself back together. And blow things up I guess. Though you don’t heal as fast as other homunculi I’ve met.”

“So I’m not a very good monster. Excellent. I suppose I can’t just snap that chain for you?”

“You see what happened when Al smashed the circle?”

“Yes. So that would make it explode.”

“ _Maybe_. It might, it might not. If I could be precise about it, break it cleanly . . . but that would mean transmuting it.”

“Then why not do that?”

Ed clapped and reached for the chain. Again, the energy crackled from his fingers and disappeared into the watch. The blue glow brightened a little bit more. “That’s why.”

“Like an earthing rod. I see. If we can’t get it away, can we shut it down? Stop the mechanism someh –”

“Ed!”

What the – ?! “Winry?!”

Winry _and_ Noah _and_ Colonel _fucking_ Fiat, all of them hurried in from the street as if late for a fucking train!

“No!” Ed yelled, waving at them to stop, “What the hell are you doing! Keep back!”

None of them listened to him, obviously. Oh no, they came running right up to the _fucking_ time-bomb! “We came to help,” Winry said, as if this explained everything – and promptly went white as she saw first Edward then Michael.

“I'm told we need to clear the area.” Fiat’s tone was conversational. “An explosive device of some kind?”

“Yes! Look! Magic watch! About to kill us all!”

“I see. Any idea of the blast radius we’re looking at?”

“No! That’s why I said clear the area!”

“Good call, good call. Put Ross on the job as well, should have the civies out in no time. Now how about stopping this thing? Very unconventional. Any ideas?”

Edward got in before Ed could start _really_ swearing. “As I was saying, if we can stop the mechanism, that might work. She said she could set it to give us plenty of time to get clear so it must be controlling the count-down.”

“Indeed? Who’s ‘she’ in all this? Come to that, young man – who, precisely, are you?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Ed snapped, “He’s right. We can’t stop it with alchemy but if we can jam the gearing or something –”

“Well of course we can!” All trace of shock disappearing, Winry thrust the spanner she was for some reason holding into Ed’s hands and pulled a leather pouch from her pocket. She scooted right up to the pillar and peered into the watch’s exposed insides. “Hmm. Ah, right! Size five should do it . . .” Taking out an Allen key, she very carefully eased the tiny metal crook between the lowermost spinning discs. Then with one deft thrust, she pushed it down.

The watch stopped.

Everyone held their breath.

Nothing exploded.

Everyone exhaled.

“Well that’s that sorted.” Winry dusted down her hands and then looked around. “What happened to Al?”

 

* * *

 

In hindsight, it might have been a mistake to actually go in person. He could have just have attached a sliver of his soul to the construct and spared himself the inevitable bruises. Only –

It had been easy when he couldn't remember being a disembodied voice in a tin can for all those years. Now the thought of sending even a part of him back to that numbed isolation was – well, he couldn't.

So instead Al was meat in a can, his mind and soul extended through a rough approximation of his old hollow body made out of Penny's magnificent motorcar. He could still feel his actual body, cushioned by material taken from the plush leather seats, but it was not his hands that moved the fingers he’d created, and his feet didn’t technically reach the end of the legs he was currently using. The best of both worlds.

None of which was stopping him feeling like a drum in the middle of a parade. Whatever was inside the other suit of armour, it was not going down easily. The more Al struck, the harder it struck back. It was fast too and getting faster, pushing him on to the defensive as they fought their way across the wharf.

He had an advantage from the start though: there _was_ something inside the armour. As quick as it was and as hard as it hit, it was still weighed down by the metal it wore. Al wasn't. He was _in_ every last plate and rivet, from helmet to boot. Right now, his armour was part of him and he moved with an ease his opponent just didn't have. So, in the end, it was almost inevitable that he would get the upper hand.

Taking a tight hold on its arm – tight enough to crush finger marks into the gauntlet – he swung the other armour hard into a wall and followed through with a spectacular punch that made its helmet ring like a bell. Dimly, he was aware of the soldiers rushing about around them, shouting and clearing dockworkers out of the way. He hoped they were nearly done with that. He knew Ed would get things under control back in the warehouse – it was just better to be safe than sorry.

That made him wonder if he should be worried about hurting whoever was inside the other armour. On the other hand, it was clearly more than human and had no problem throwing cars at people, so maybe not. At least he seemed to finally be tiring it out. It came up swaying this time, looking punch-drunk. He weaved expertly around its unfocused flailing, jabbing it in the belly before flipping it on to its back.

“That's enough. Give up and let's end this quietly.”

It got up and tried to punch him again. Sighing, he caught it by the wrist, braced his other hand against its shoulder and _yanked_.

The gauntlet and most of the elbow joint ripped away. Most of the upper arm came loose, the pauldron falling apart as the armour reeled back. And underneath –

Something black and squirming, lashing frantically about before vanishing into the chest. Or maybe evaporating. A bit of both? Definitely not human. Or anything _remotely_ resembling human.

Apparently not hurt in any serious way by losing an entire arm, the armour shoulder-charged Al, putting enough effort into it to actually gain a couple of strides.

He sighed again. “OK then . . .”

Since there was now nothing to protect its right flank, Al had all the opening he needed to pummel it. He landed blow after savage blow, pushing it right to the edge of the wharf until, with nowhere else to go, it crumpled to its knees.

Al seized it by the helmet. “Let's see what you're like under there.” He pulled –

– and the helmet came away without any resistance whatsoever.

Before he could stop it, the rest of the armour pitched over the edge. His desperately grasping hands closed on nothing but the sound of a heavy splash and the rapid glug-glugging of inrushing water.

 

* * *

 

“Your brother can certainly hold his own, Major Elric.” Colonel Fiat was looking through the warehouse doorway, his comment underscored by the distant sounds of metal on metal.

From where he sat fiddling with the watch chain, Ed grunted an acknowledgement. He'd been sitting there for a couple of minutes, absorbed in the intricate engraving on each link while Winry tried to bring the same level of attention to the watch itself.

That was kind of hard under the circumstances.

Said circumstances were sitting off to the side, arms wrapped around their knees. The other Edward hadn't said a word since they'd stopped the explosion going off. But neither had he taken his eyes off Ed. Winry wasn't sure he'd blinked once.

Unable to take any more of that kind of freakiness, she marched over and brandished the spanner under his nose. “OK you. I want some answers.”

“Winry . . .” It sounded like exhaustion was starting to catch up with Ed. “Wait.”

“Uh-uh. He said he was going to try and kill you!”

“I did.” Edward did not sound tired. He did not sound very much of anything.

“Right! So are we just supposed to accept that you're on our side now?!”

“Clearly you don't.”

“No. I don't. You brought us here. You're the only reason we knew about this place. But you were stalking us around the city for days. You could have tried to contact us any time and you didn't. I want to know why not.”

Edward stayed very still. He did not look at her. “I wasn't free to do that.”

“Because of the thing in the armour?” Noah asked. She'd ghosted up beside Winry, apparently done checking over Michael's injuries.

“Yes,” Edward agreed, “That and . . . other things. It's complicated.”

Winry bristled. “Complicated enough that you _tried to kill Ed_?!”

A familiar heavy footstep and Ed himself appeared on her other side. He crossed his arms. “She's got a point. You were trying pretty damn hard for someone who wanted to help us deep down.”

“Yes,” Edward repeated in a whisper. His breath shuddered. “I couldn't help it. Do . . . do you have any idea how much I hate you?”

“What?!” Totally taken aback, Winry very nearly hit the roof. It was amazing how being angry could make you completely forget how dangerous someone was. “How can you –?”

Ed touched her very lightly on the arm. “Yeah,” he said to Edward, “I can guess.”

“Can you? I remember it all, you see. I remember you . . . walking me to my death . . . I remember lying there in the Zeppelin wreckage while you escaped through the Gate . . . everything after that.”

“I –”

“Didn’t mean to. I _know_. It just doesn’t actually make any difference. I'm trapped in a world I don't understand, in a body that doesn't feel like it's mine any more, and every time I think about why that is, I see your face. I'd be quite happy if I never had to see you ever again.”

“So you decided to make sure you didn't have to?” Winry accused.

“Decided?” Edward's tone turned dangerous. “You think I _decide_ to go berserk and destroy everything that makes me feel bad? I can hear your hearts beating in your chests, I can smell what each of you had for breakfast and every nerve I have screams if I so much as twitch! Those stones they made me eat? They're like fire in my gut. In my heart. My blood is _burning_.”

“You seem pretty in control now. And you weren’t going berserk earlier, either.”

“Just be thankful I wasn't on _fire_ this time around. At least I _could_ stop, as damned hard as that was. Besides, there are bigger things to worry about and I _told_ you – you aren't him. You don't hurt as much to be around.” He rubbed his temples and stretched his legs out. “I should probably leave before I give in the urge to rip his head off.”

At this, Ed stuffed a hand into his hair and made an exasperated sound. He'd been getting progressively paler the more Edward said and this seemed to be the final straw. “Aragh! No! Don't be dumb! You can't leave!”

“I can. Believe me. It will be safer for everyone. Especially you.”

“But not for you!”

For the first time, Edward looked up at them, first Winry, then Noah and finally, reluctantly, Ed. “Perhaps. That's not your problem though.”

“Of course it is! Did you think we didn't try to find you? We tried! I'm sorry it wasn't enough. I'm sorry you got caught up with – whoever the hell's behind all this! But you don't have to go. You don't have to see me ever again if you don't want to but – let us help you. Let Mustang help you! We can keep you safe!”

“You don't have the first idea what that would mean.”

“I don't care! That bastard you dragged here so your boss could play with his watch? He decided to do everything himself and tried to sort out the big bad secret all on his own – and he ended up killing people! Don't you get that? If he'd asked me for help – asked anyone for help – this whole fucking mess might not have fucking happened!”

“Ahem.” Behind them, Colonel Fiat cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen. I certainly don't wish to interrupt this fascinating conversation but I suspect this is something that requires the immediate attention of the experts in the room.”

Winry was sure she was not the only one who turned around with the intention of saying something really rude to the pompous prick and his stupid beard. Before she could get a single curse out however, she saw the smoke spilling out of Michael's watch.

“Oh shit.” Ed dived for it, grabbing the edge of the pillar. A miniature lightning bolt struck his fingers, earthing into the metal. As Winry watched, her Allen key began to bend. “OK. Maybe jamming it wasn't such a brilliant idea after all.”

“It stopped it exploding didn't it?!”

“Delayed! Delayed it exploding! We have to get it out of here. Throw it in the river – no, that won't be enough. We have to smother it somehow.”

“But you can't do your alchemy near it,” Edward protested, “The energy would be –”

“Sucked in, I know, I know – come on, come on, think! There has to be something –”

“Michael asked about transmuting without a circle!” Noah burst out, “Back at the mansion – he asked me about it! What you said – what if he trying to get rid of the watch? Is that why he was asking about that?”

Ed gaped at her. Winry could practically see his brain churning. “He asked me about that too. Asked me to teach him. Power and precision . . . he said – you!” Grabbing Michael by the shoulder, he shook him hard. “Wake up you bastard! Power and precision! Why did you care about that? Why did you want to know about how I do alchemy?!”

A low moan came from Michael's cracked lips, echoed by a low moan of mechanical stress from the watch. More smoke was pouring out, and there was a blue halo in the air around it. Michaels eyes fluttered. “P-p-power,” he mumbled, “Needed more power. Overload.”

“Yes! That's what it's doing!”

“N-no. Not overload it. More power than it could take. Overload the . . . the . . . reaction . . .” He fainted again.

Apparently he'd said enough though because Ed jumped up triumphantly. “That's it! The watch can only take so much power at a time! If you used a powerful enough transmutation, it wouldn't be able to suck up all the energy and the reaction would take! He must have thought my kind of alchemy would be enough but . . . well I don't know if it is. You'd need to have an amplifier to be sure.”

“What kind of amplifier?” Fiat asked, at the same time Winry said, “You mean, another one of these watches?”

“Yeah, another watch. Or a philosopher's stone. Or . . . or red stones.”

The implications didn't hit Winry immediately. From their expressions, neither Noah nor Fiat got it either. Edward did though. Touching his stomach, he met Ed's stare. “The red stones inside me? They could help you stop this?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so! There's an array I know – it can get them out of you. It won't be nice but –”

“We both know there's a quicker way,” he said, smiling and lifting his arms. “And that we don't have time to argue about it.”

“No, wait –”

Faster than blinking, Edward drove his hands into his belly.

 

* * *

 

It happened too fast for Noah to follow. One instant, Ed's double was smiling at them. The next, he was pulling handfuls of pebbles from his own body. Winry screamed. Noah couldn't move. Even Colonel Fiat let out a shocked exclamation.

His face a mask of agony, Ed took the stones from Edward, who slowly doubled over and collapsed into the blood pooling around his feet.

Winry tore off her jacket and bundled it up. As Ed spun away back to the watch, she dropped and pushed the bundle against Edward's limp form, trying to staunch the wound. “Help me!” she shouted at Fiat.

Ed sorted through the stones, picking out some of the bigger ones before scrunching the whole lot together. Red light filled his cupped hands and when it was gone, he was holding a single stone, large as his fist and swirling with fire. “OK,” he whispered, “OK. Let's do this.”

He took the stone in his left hand and caught hold of the watch chain with his right. Sparks and electrical arcs ripped along his auto-mail but he kept his grip. Slowly, he brought the stone closer and closer until it and the chain were touching –

“Put pressure here and hold it!” Winry was ordering, “Edward? Edward, can you hear me? Come on – talk to me!”

The stone blazed. Noah could practically see its light being drawn into the watch, drained into the blue star caught under the dial. Ed gritted his teeth and kept going, sweat pouring from his brow.

“I'm sorry, Miss Rockbell. This kind of wound –”

“I know! Shut up and keep pressing!”

The moaning from the watch became a whine. Smoke billowed from it in great plumes. Winry's tool was actually _melting_. The blue light got brighter yet, and so did the red. Ed's mouth parted in a furious roar of exertion.

Noah put her hand over his. She could see what he was doing, the faint molten line he was starting to draw across one of the links. She focused her mind on that as well, feeling for the tell-tale feedback from the materials they were working with. It came with blindly clarity as the heat from the stone surged through her skin. It was just steel. Ordinary worked steel. It should have been simplicity itself to break it apart.

Instead it was a fight. Their will and the fire in the stone against the cold sink-hole that was the watch. They were pushing a boulder up a hill, running on shifting sands. It was not going to be enough. It had to be. It had to be! It . . . would . . . be . . .

The link snapped. Instantly, Noah felt the watch's hold on her alchemy loosen. Ed felt it too and he barked in triumph. “The pillar! Around it! Now!”

They changed targets and the pillar became thick putty, reluctantly parting to gulp down the watch. The stone was ebbing away, visibly shrinking as they worked. Even as the last of the blue glow disappeared into a five-inch ball of concrete, the red light dwindled to nothingness.

All Noah's strength went with it. Ed fell against her. “We gotta run,” he said, struggling to move.

“But Edward –” Winry began.

“He's gone, Miss Rockbell! Major Elric's right! Help me with these two!”

Noah tried to pull Ed up. Her arms and legs moved frustratingly slowly. Fiat swooped in, slipping an arm under Ed's armpit. “Up and at them, Major. One last bit of PT and you can have the night off!”

But he was obviously surprised at how heavy Ed was and his heave became an uncoordinated stumble. They were never going to be able to lift him in time –

With a long despairing cry, Winry scooped up the spanner and swung it with all her might. The ball in which they'd imprisoned the watch flew from the remains of the pillar, bounced twice and rolled neatly into Al's over-sized chromium hand.

 

* * *

 

As soon as he saw the ball coming towards him, Al knew what must be inside. He grabbed it and hugged it tight to his chest. There was only one thing to do. Even as the heat started to reach him through the leather cushioning, he ran like hell for the wharf's edge.

At the last second, he transmuted his improvised armour one more time. The back opened out and folded around the front, sealing over arms, hands, ball and all. Pink panels became lead-black, density increasing exponentially. Soul crashing back into his flesh-and-blood self, Al pushed himself up and kicked out hard.

He flew one way. His armour pitched the other. For the second time in as many minutes, a metal figure crashed into the river.

Al ran for his life.

The warehouse doorway was in touching distance when the explosion went off. The blast scooped him up and blew him inside. He had just enough presence of mind to curl himself up before the noise punched him in both ears and the world went white.

 

* * *

 

Ed sat up. The world consisted mainly of pink blotches. Blinking a lot gradually began to take care of that. Surprisingly, the building was still standing. He was sure it had been falling around his ears a minute ago. But no.

The wooden door-frame was well and truly finished though and the doors were now a distant memory, their sorry remains scattered in a semi-circle behind –

“A –!”

“AL!” In a whirl of skirts and hair, Noah rushed to his brother's aid. Al lifted his head, answering his friend with much wincing and the bleary incomprehension of the recently deafened. She pulled him into a tight hug and even as he yelped in pain, he was beaming and responding in kind.

“Huh,” Ed said to himself, not quite sure what to think about not being the first one at Al's side. Then he remembered – “Winry!”

She was right next to him, on the ground, still holding the spanner. “Owwww,” she complained, “What hit me?”

“Nothing you didn't hit first.”

Her brow furrowed and she sat up as well. Which thankfully proved she hadn't broken anything, since Ed was pretty sure she'd have found out right then if she had. She held up the spanner and almost immediately dropped it. “Good grief, that was _really_ dumb! What if I'd got us all blown up? I could have set it off!”

“You didn't.” He reached out to brush her hair back behind her ear and leant in to kiss her forehead. “And it wasn't dumb. It was really smart and really, really brave. You just saved all our lives.”

“In that case, I guess it _was_ smart.” Her gaze drifted past his shoulder and her smile faded before it could really begin. “I didn't save everyone though.”

Right. He didn't really want to look but there wasn't really a choice, was there?

Edward lay where they'd left him, a huddled rag doll form. Even through all the dust, Ed gagged on the smell of viscera. Ever so gently, he eased the body on to its back. Edward's head lolled around as he did so and Ed shivered, unable to help himself. Then, because he _needed_ to see, he looked down at the wound.

Which wasn't there.

“Is something the matter, Major Elric?” Colonel Fiat was far too put together for someone who'd just gone through everything the rest of them had. Despite the inevitable layer of dirt, his uniform was perfectly straight and his bearing as confident as ever. Ed would have bristled at that alone, even without the really fucking inconvenient questions.

“Yes _sir_. I'm holding a dead body, _sir_. Permission not to be happy about that, _sir_.”

“Man died a hero, Major. Didn't he?”

Fuck you, Fiat and fuck your deliberate emphasis. Ed clenched his jaw and carefully shook out Winry's blood-soaked jacket so that he could lay it over Edward's torso, keeping his back to Fiat the whole time. He knew in the long run, he was probably just putting off the awkward questions but the longer he could do that, the better. “Not leaving you behind this time,” he muttered, settling the jacket and _coincidentally_ happening to pat Edward's shoulder at the same time.

“Oh no.” Leaning on Noah, Al stared at him aghast. He was favouring his right leg and there was a cut across his forehead. “Is he . . . ?”

“We can talk about it later.” Ed hoped that was a big enough hint to change the subject. “Are you OK? That was some pretty great last-minute rescuing back there.”

“Everything hurts, but that's usually a good sign, isn't it? I kind of totally wrecked Penny's car though so maybe I'd better go and break my leg so I'll look more sympathetic when she asks me to pay for it.”

“Hah! Is that what that was? Hey, you did her a favour, getting rid of that pink monster!”

“You wouldn't be saying that if it came in black. So, err . . . is that it? Is it over?”

Ed laced his fingers behind his head and took stock. The watch was gone and he did not want to see how much damage it had out there just yet. Cassandra was gone and in all the destruction, he somehow doubted they were going to find a trail to follow. He guessed the other suit of armour was gone too, given that Al had come back alone. Edward was there. Which just left . . .

One clap dissolved the manacles holding Michael to the floor. Far from gently, Ed turned him over. He sprawled there, burnt and battered and pathetic, the remaining length of watch-chain clinking as he stirred. Ed tried and failed to summon up anything other than contempt.

“One last loose end. The Colonel here finally gets to arrest the right guy.”

“Most kind, Major Elric.” Fiat bowed to him. “Couldn't have done it without you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Obviously, if a tool is mentioned in the first act, it must be used to stop the doomsday weapon in the third.  
> * I realise I've had Mustang turn up to say 'what's going on' twice in the space of two chapters. Don't worry, he'll be back in control of the situation for the final chapter.  
> * Which I will finish soonish. I hope.


End file.
